Electrifying Photos of Flowers Being Zapped by 80,000 Volts

Photographer Robert Buelteman takes pictures of shocking things — literally. The California-based photographer uses Kirlian photography techniques to capture amazing images of 80,000 volts of electricity coursing through flowers. The technique is so dangerous and tedious that very few people in the world even attempt this kind of photography.

Buelteman begins by painstakingly whittling down flowers, leaves, sprigs, and twigs with a scalpel until they’re translucent. He then lays each specimen on color transparency film and, for a more detailed effect, covers it with a diffusion screen. This assemblage is placed on his “easel”—a piece of sheet metal sandwiched between Plexiglas, floating in liquid silicone. Buelteman hits everything with an electric pulse and the electrons do a dance as they leap from the sheet metal, through the silicone and the plant (and hopefully not through him), while heading back out the jumper cables. In that moment, the gas surrounding the subject is ionized, leaving behind ethereal coronas. He then hand-paints the result with white light shining through an optical fiber the width of a human hair, a process so tricky each image can take up to 150 attempts.

Here’s a video of Buelteman explaining the process (thanks Joakim!):

You can find more of these images over on Buelteman’s website.

(via Wired)

Image credits: Photographs by Robert Buelteman and used with permission