I am an igneous petrologist, with a particular interest in continental alkaline rocks. My Ph.D. was on nephelinite-carbonatite volcanism in Kenya and Tanzania; I have also published work on the Ice River Complex, British Columbia (ijolite-nepheline syenite-carbonatite), the Crowsnest Volcanics, Alberta (analcime-phyric phonolites), and the Dubawnt Supergroup, Nunavut (lamproite-minette volcanic rocks). I began collecting minerals and photographing rocks in the field and under the microscope as a student. I hope you enjoy my Mindat gallery!

I take my photographs with an Olympus E330 SLR camera, using the Zuiko 50 mm macro lens. I generate nearly all of my mineral images using CombineZM. In addition to extending the depth of focus, this enables me to use the aperture at which my lens performs best (5.0). With the lens alone, I can achieve a minimum horizontal field of view (FOV) of about 4 cm; with a ring extender, I can reduce this to 1.8 cm. Images are captured in RAW format and currently, I process these entirely with Photoshop.

Images generated with CombineZ are of course much more detailed than single-frame pictures, but they have the disadvantage of having fewer of, or even lacking, the visual cues that allow the viewer to appreciate the depth of view of the scene. On balance, I find this tradeoff more than satisfactory but I do try to leave the rearmost portion of the image out of focus, to retain some of these cues. I have found that using a frosted black acrylic sheet as a background is helpful in this regard; it has just enough fine detail to be clearly in or out of focus, but not so much detail that it distracts attention from the specimen. Recently, I have begun using the stereo image pair generating feature of CombineZ and I will be providing stereo pairs for most of my new photo sets, and gradually adding them to old ones.

I use a home-made apparatus to photograph in, which doesn't much resemble any setup I've read about. A bank of 8 50 watt halogen lights is directed upward at an arcuate hood lined with crushed aluminum foil; beneath the lights and about 30 cm above the specimen is a sheet of frosted transparent acrylic. Small pieces of black cardboard, placed on top of the acrylic sheet, allow me to selectively shade some areas to eliminate or reduce extreme reflections. In many cases, and especially for glassy or metallic specimens, I find placing sheets of paper towel over the acrylic useful to create an extremely even, diffuse light source. All of these elements are mounted within a wooden frame spray-painted flat black to eliminate all but overhead light. Small white or aluminized cardboard reflectors, angled towards the specimen from the surface or from attached wires anchored to vertical segments of dowel (painted black!), provide for fill lighting and control of specific reflections. Exposure times are typically about 1 second but may be as great as 3.2 seconds.

Most of my photographs are of specimens from my own collection but I have the advantage of full access to the collection of a local dealer/collector with many superb specimens. I have also uploaded some photos of thin sections and will be adding many more in the future, primarily from my personal collection of alkaline rocks from around the world.