Are You Ready For Your Close Up, Miss Colada?

BevShots have discovered what you’d call a niche: they take your favourite alcoholic drink, crystallise a single droplet of it in an airtight container, photograph it at 1000x under a microscope, and then sell the resulting image on a printed canvas.

And man, are these things selling! Since August last year BevShots estimate sales of over 20,000 prints ($24.99-$549). The product is aimed at the ‘hedonist with a mind for science’ segment: those who appreciate good photography, laboratory conditions and a damn-tasty cocktail now and then.

Here’s my favourite image, the classic Vodka and Tonic:

The shots are taken in Florida State University’s chemistry department, where founder Lester Hutt developed the approach, which can take up to three months to produce an image.

Lester says:

“What you can see in the magnified pictures are the crystalised carbohydrates that have become sugars and glucose. With my background in chemistry, I saw the potential in these kind of pictures and am so glad to be able to offer them up as art works. It is a pleasure to show people what makes up their favourite drinks and how beautiful it can look.”

Most alcohols are blends, with varying levels of carbohydrates, sugars, acids and glucose, so each shot taken is entirely different from the last. Some favourite drinks are so pure that when they crystallise  into their component parts, they fall apart or don’t dry out properly. So, not unlike the perfect Margarita, they’re pretty hard to get ‘just right’, sometimes taking up to 200 attempts.

Here’s some more of their work – click through for the full images or visit BevShots.

I’m thirsty! Who’s for a drink?

Self-Pixellation

In his recent work “Papercraft Self Portrait”, 3D artist Eric Testrole did something really cool for Halloween. He pixellated his own head!

It was kind of inspired by big-head mode seen in videogames. I really wanted to get the faceted geosphere look with wireframe.

He’s been a character designer in the video game industry for nine years, so this is a case of life now mimicking his art, as his skills having now ‘absorbed’ his very being. Very spooky. Here’s how it happened:

The head was created from a blocky 370 polygons, using 3ds Max
A model was created from a blocky 370 polygons
He then used Mudbox 2010 and Photoshop CS3 to add texture
Texture was added to match his appearance using PhotoShop
He then printed, cut and folded up the pieces using high quality paper.
The ‘polygons’ are printed, cut & glued together

The finished result is the surreal creation you see prowling the streets in the below Flickr photoset. Hit fullscreen for best effect: