Stills

Rex, the whole thing is lapis lazuli. The blue in lapis lazuli is a mixture of lazurite and sodalite. The whites are calcite and there also is yellow pyrite. Lots of other additions are possible (Wikipedia if you want the full story).

The camera was spirit level levelled, but the background was uneven! It just catches the depth of field top left. I would have bracketed in third stops if I had imagined anybody looking at this closely :-)

As it was, I was concentrating on the colours. You can imagine that with a spread of blues and yellows like this, the picture is very sensitive to white balance (especailly colour temperature).
 

I have a friend who is an artist and insists on buying his pigments from a shop in Paris (I think it is the same shop that sold pigments to the Impressionists!) The last time we went to Paris with him he bought a (small) phial of LL and joked it was more expensive than gold.
 

I come to this with a bit of baggage I'm afraid. Living in Chile for three years, we saw a lot of lapis lazuli. Chile is one of the areas of production, although the pigment is different to Afghanistan. Also the rock that it is carried in is grey rather than white/yellow.

As a photographic exercise it is rather fascinating: the blue swims out of both the stone and the background and exists as something independent (the first in the series on your site was spoiled by the background having a blue tinge). To appreciate it as a picture one needs to see it as semi-abstract. In some ways the uneven DoF works in the picture's favour.

Rex, you can tell your friend that his joke was inaccurate! LL is not very expensive - at least, not in Chile.
 

John

(the first in the series on your site was spoiled by the background having a blue tinge)

And there was you telling me colour was subjective...that first shot was balanced by eye, not by WhiBal.

In some ways the uneven DoF works in the picture's favour.

Ah, yes, Rex, what I meant to say was that the DOF was a deliberate attempt to highlight the different qualities of the two stones........pah! It was a mistake, even if, as John points out, not a failure.

LL is not very expensive - at least, not in Chile.

Nor on eBay. I was wondering how the paint colour was defined, given that LL does not have a steady composition, and even the major colour component, Lazurite, does not have a single chemical formula (anything whose formula starts with either Sodium or Calcium is at best loosely defined). And what about the pyrite? Perhaps it is expensive because somebody hand picks out all the shiny bits.
 

This image got me interested in looking up minerals as photo subjects. From ebay, to google, to people who know a whole bunch about minerals. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, at the price that some mineral examples are on sale for! Thousands of pounds in some instances and I'm not talking gem encrusted rocks. Let me know who the ebay seller was Colin and we can fight over other examples.

Anyhow, and moving on, the contrast offered by the blue here is great and, though I would have been tempted (no, never again) to use my black acrylic sheet for this one, I think the chosen background works extremely well.

I find this a calming image for some reason and a little hypnotic. My eyes see the stone and round and round they go.
 

I expect that Lapis Lazuli might be low cost but by the time it is turned into a pigment for oil paint there is a bit of added value!

LL was used to paint the cloak of Madonna in many religious paintings. I believe it gained popularity in that application due to the reverence of the cloak and the expense of LL plus its permanence and brilliance.

I found the pigment on the web for sale at $16.50/10gms. I think if you were going to paint a canvas for behind the alter at my local church of Madonna and Child you'd need more than 10gms for the cloak!!!!
 

Afghanistan Lazurite $23.50/10gms (The $16 stuff was something else blue!)
 

Even painting with oil paint in your church would be expensive.
 

JohnJo,

Not eBay as it turns out (that was just an assumption by me), but a company called mineral craft north. Single pieces of Lapis Lazuli just over a pound, and mixed 250g bags for seventeen pounds (these are polished rocks, just like the one in my photo).

http://www.mineralcraft.com/acatalog/
 

Thanks for the pointer Colin. These guys also seem to be in the rock business. Good specimines but for a price:

http://www.wildaboutrocks.com/
 

I see this as an abstract head of a mantis. Interesting that you positioned the rock in such a way...any reason? The blue is a very unusual shade. If you focus closely on the blue then look at the background it becomes much sharper for a short time. A simple but complex picture.
 

akikana - the background is just a piece of stone off the beach. I pick stuff up that looks like it is interesting from time to time. The LL is polished so I wanted a background that would contrast with it. Virtually colourless and heavily textured. Some of the other shots in the series used a piece of Photo Rag as background for much the same reason.

The blue is, well, it is amazing isn't it. Nothing deliberately distorting in the photo.

Not a bad outcome for a technique experiment....