And finally, the first artwork with my new 473 nm 100 mW Jet Lasers PL-E Pro...
The Surreal World
What do I mean when speaking about the Surreal World, the world of dreams, the world of souls? This laserpainting is about that. As you know we are composed of atoms and these are composed of elementary particles. These elementary particles behave a very strange way described by laws of quantum mechanics. At this scale and even if we go to smaller sizes the quantum mechanics world takes the starring role.
Current science is struggling with joining both views of small and large in united theory of everything, but I do it through the art. I see the Surreal World as a main essence of reality and it is in deed hidden in quantum mechanics.
Now imagine that every particle carries a little bit of soul as they create larger and more complex structures and evolve even to living things like individual cells, trees and organisms, the souls become more complex and go to the level of consciousness and self reference. Take a deeper look on human brain, the most complex structure in known universe. The processes happening there are not only electric pulses happening in neuronal network. More complex rules apply and include quantum mechanics - this is where we go. The reality is just the perceived projection of the surreal world. We live and die, but our souls are infinete and timeless.
Long story short. In this artwork you might notice how I perceive it, the souls of the tree and myself, those which are in the surreal world projects through light bounced of scene and shapen by optics onto camera sensor, where timeless and spaceless surreal world is measured and thus creating reality - the artwork you can see. All my thoughts, perception, my soul, soul of the tree, forest and everything on scene from that time interval of exposure is there on single timeless picture. The sphere links to the seemingly separation of reality and surreal world, but there are many interconnections shown. I'll let on viewer to get his/her point of view from perception of this artwork as many details have been included there to find the meanings described above.
Note: As this artwork is real photo, I left there intentionally some imperfections like dust on sensor, lens etc. to underline its real essence (although they might be noticed only in highest resolution version). Absolutely no computer graphics It is just processed from RAW. Also note that kind of bluriness on the picture is not an imperfection, I call it a laser grain and it is caused by laser light special characteristics and refer to quantum mechanics esence.
And a story for LPF
I was working on this laserpainting about a month. I studied the scene by many visits, thought about the meaning, composition and everything. One of the reasons was I was waiting for my new 100 mW of 473 nm from Jet Lasers. I also took three laserpainiting nights to get several versions of this artwork. I finally selected the one from the last trip, you might like also some of the earlier versions as some show other beautiful and here not used effect I discovered, but I would like to study it, develop it and use it in my further laserpaintings. It is not really easy and might be quite dangerous.
A lot might be experienced in night forest. I meet wild life everywhere. Forest in night is something completely different than during the day. By my night trips I heared a lot of forest sounds and especially to me well known deer (roebuck) was heared by my every night visit when working on this artwork. By the second one I heard him being very angry and from a bit different angle I heard another deer. I was surprised how different voices they had and I could clearly differ them. I think that after I left they had a fight.
By my last trip when I took this picture the deer was at about the same spot, but during my painting he moved from one side of the forest passing my spot just across the creek unnoticed to the other side as I heared them from that direction later. That seems like he is scared of me lasering more than I'm scared from him making noises. Good thing as it made me more confident being there when he is nearby. I still have in front of my eyes my very close experience with him from last summer, when he was about to kick my butt with his antlers and my Evo laser, currently being tested, saved me. Hopefully I'm the greatest beast of the night forest again.
Interesting effects, tips & tricks
And when I was waiting for camera to process the laserpainting, I took a photo with mobile of this nice diffraction pattern I noticed (sorry for quality, but it shows it nicely). There was diffraction grating used to get many beams from my 589 nm. The grating was so called galaxy lens by Wicked Lasers - creating not only horizontal but also vertical dots. One of the dots after diffraction grating (you may notice three other in the background) I projected on a piece of paper and took a picture of the pattern. Note, there is also shape of the gratting projected. All dots look about like this in sufficient distance. Also to mention - I used 2X beam expander just before the grating.
I'm not sure how to interpret this pattern, however it seems to me it might be caused by internal reflections between back and rear grating surface (in case one surface is for horizontal and the other for vertical dots). This seems quite likely to me. I was thinking also about multiline behaviour of 589 nm Spartans, but the temperature was not that low, also about Fresnell's diffraction, but the shape of the pattern is not corresponding to it, or there might be some internal reflections in optics (beam expander), but the intensity and shape of this pattern does not seem to be corresponding to it. Any other ideas?
I need to do more experiments with this, but might be point to be discussed here.
I aslo realized, that 473 nm is great for illumination of sky and making it beautiful blue look. There was clear sky with moonlight, therefore almost no light pollution, but I just wonder if in high light pollution it would create kind of purple/pink look as you might notice where yellow and blue meet. Also it is good to mention, that I noticed, the beam in the air looks very different from the dot of 473 nm. The beam seems to be with blue tint and the dot seems to be with more green tint in it.
And as usuall, there is a heavy laser grain to be noticed especially around the yellow stars, I was trying to reduce it in my laserpainting beginnings, but I've found a beauty in it very soon, as it has higher meaning to me in the artworks. So here it is intentional part of the artwork.
Another effect mentioned above I'll describe when I'll include it in the further artworks I'm thinking about now.
I learned a lot when working on this one therefore no attempt was unsuccessful, as I gained many new ideas. I feel I'm improving and I have more and more ideas. This is likely the most exciting thing on doing laserpainting IMO.