At the end of Part 1, I made a suggestion that you might want to try out specimens other than crystals using the Warp function; things such as shells, insects, sea urchin tests, etc. Well, after having written that, it occurred to me that I hadn’t done that myself and so I decided to make up for the failing by inflicting a Part 2 on you.
I started poking around some images which I had that looked like they might have possibilities and, guess what, I found hundreds. However, fret not, I narrowed it down to 97. Oh no, it turned out to be only 6, plus one more crystal warp. What a relief.
Let’s begin with something quite elegant. I had a nice image of an Atlas moth which I took with my trusty Nikon CoolPix 995 and here it is.
Quite beautiful, isn’t it? It’s the largest moth in the world. But, perhaps, you’d rather have a lot of little ones rather than one big one. Well, I think we can accommodate that.
Or perhaps, some that were caught in a cyclone.
And then, we have four that form a nice quadrate design and you will notice that all four are smiling–Atlas Happy Faces, I guess.
Furthermore, we can even transform this elegant beastie into a colorful, incredibly large amphitheater.
Or geometric forms that would challenge the ingenuity of Lobachevski, Reimann, and Poincaré.
Now, let’s shift gears and look at a very colorful, iridescent Rhinoceros beetle which is also very bizarre looking. It is named Laprina adolphinae from Papua, New Guinea.
First off, we have something that might be out of a Busby Berkeley production. I’ll give you an image of one of his showpieces of burlesque girls to compare.
Next up is a warp image that is both playful and perhaps a bit unnerving. One might imagine it as a picture frame for the Addams Family.
Nonetheless, using the right functions, one can get quite a splendid and aesthetically pleasing pattern.
Then again, they might transform into a spiral staircase for Coleoptera.
Next, let’s see what happens when we experiment with the test of a marvelous sea urchin named Stereocidaris granularis.
If you thought that we were in the realm of wild geometries earlier, well, put on your seatbelts, because this urchin provides us some stunning convolutions, concatenations, coalescences, crinolations, and crinkles (and that was done without a thesaurus, because right now our Internet is down and I couldn't Google anything).
The first example demonstrates splendid symmetry.
For those of you who like spirals, I serve up the following.
Next is a quasi-stellar phenomenon.
And then, a case of geometry gone berserk or what we might call an instance of hyperstereocidaricism.
Now, my favorite of this series, with a flotilla of space ships moving through what is clearly the curvatures of space.
And what would a series be without an alien? This one looks surprised with its jellyfish eyes and tiny mouth.
Some of you may have heard of the aptly named Goliath beetle which is another type of Rhinoceros beetle. They get up to about 6 inches in length and this specimen is, I think, quite a handsome fellow.
The first image makes it look as though we have 4 pairs dancing.
For those of you who are squeamish about “bugs”, you might want to skip this next image as it looks like an infestation of miniature Goliaths (an oxymoron?).
On the other hand, we can produce something quite beautiful which would be a fitting pattern for a stained glass window.
Moving on, we will look at a beautiful, small sea shell which forms in an elegant spiral and is popularly known as a Wentletrap, derived from a Dutch word for spiral staircase.
In this first image, we can see a combination of rectangles and curved forms.
Naturalists preparing displays either for scientific journals or museum displays will sometimes arrange a number of specimens of the same genus or even species in rows to show variation. Here we have a function that accomplishes that, but using just a single specimen.
Before going to the final set with a crystal, I will show you another beautiful creature, a Sunset moth from Madagascar–marvelously iridescent colors.
Ah, but looks can be deceiving, for just a click away, we encounter a reptilian monster with long fangs, ready to attack.
Very aggressive, this moth; just another click away and we get four high-tech fighter jets.
However, when it puts its mind to it, it can also create lovely, intricate patterns.
Finally, the crystal images from a single photo of crystals of Tartaric acid which was melted and then remelted. Rather than me blathering on, annoying you with my wacky pareidolia, I’ll just present you with the image and then 9 warp images of it. So, here goes. First the original image, then next, the same image with Invert function in which the colors are reversed. The remaining images all were produced with the Warp function.
Well, I hope you had some fun with this little playful excursion and will be encouraged to try out some graphics diversions of your own.
All comments to the author Richard Howey
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Editor's note: Visit Richard Howey's new website at http://rhowey.googlepages.com/home where he plans to share aspects of his wide interests.
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