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Ferrofluid, a paramagnetic fluid composed of nanoscale ferromagnetic particles suspended in a carrier fluid, was placed onto a glass plate. The edges of the glass plate are visible at the bottom of the image. A powerful N40 neodymium magnet was placed under the glass along with an iron rod to steepen the field. Spikes form, in a phenomenon called normal field instability, where the magnetic forces are great enough to overcome gravity and surface tension to align the fluid in a magnetically ideal manner.
Equipment
Canon 5D
10mm/f2.85 Macro at f/200
ISO 100, 10 second exposure
Background illumination provided by 2400watts of 65K high-cri fluorescent. Highlight illumination by photoflash reflected off a 40ft x 15 ft white matt panel.
Processing
RAW to 16bit conversion with dcraw
Slight rotation
Cropping to 4:3 aspect
Gain to bring background to white.
Minor cloning to remove sensor dust from background area
Scaled to 2048x1536
Captions
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