Danielle is my little girl, I'm eternally grateful for that and it's why I'm uploading an image of her, but I'm kind of sad because in about 2 months, she reaches 13, and then starts to become a Princess and then a 'little lady'.   I've already told her she can forget about boyfriends for quite some time, and that she won't have a thing to worry about since I'll be sitting in the backseat of the car for her first 100 dates  8^)) !!!!!!!!!

        First off, I did not Photoshop this together.  It's a straight film shot.  This is a 2 dollar plastic magnifier sitting over a pair of Ray-Bans, sitting on brushed Aluminum.   You can get the same effect of a light pattern if you get a magnifier and look at it at an extreme angle which should hopefully convince everybody that I didn't do this in Photoshop.

        I started playing around with this magnifier, proping it up by putting objects under it which produced some interesting light patterns, which to the naked eye were much more defined than you see here as the Turner Reich renders these light patterns in a much softer way. 

        Getting the magnifer at a certain angle to the light,  and looking through the Turner Reich, the light pattern looked like something mystical to me and I thought of what I read about 'Indra's Net', thus the name of the shot.  I wanted to inject the human element into the idea, so I thought of glasses which is what folks use to examine things.   I wasn't about to putting reading glasses under the magnifier to prop it up, so I used my daughter's Ray-Bans.

        The illusion of the 'road of light' trailing off into the background under the glasses was a surprise to me because the glasses are under the magnifier, and the light pattern is along the fresnel pattern of the magnifier which sits over the glasses, so it's the exact opposite of what it looks like.   The glasses have a certain texture because they're sitting under the magnifier.

        I didn't know what the hell to use for an exposure, so I used 'one thousand one, one thousand two, and fired the shutter.   The copy of this image on my website looks different becuase I simply 'dragged and dropped' this smaller image onto a larger black background and left it at that.

I'm not uploading this to 'fish for compliments', but to serve up a better looking j-peg which'll give a better sense of what the Turner Reich can do.  Understand the tiff version of this shot looks several times as good as the J-peg, and the print looks a lot better than the tiff. 

After doing the shot which I originally uploaded here, I left the set-up in place, and put my camera up, and then decided to shoot some slightly different angles, and to shoot some versions w/Ilford FP4 which I'll get from the lab early next week.  If the FP4 serves up a quantum jump in transfering the values and nuances of the TR, then I'll try to upload those shots.  But bottom line, j-pegs just don't do justice to what this lens can do.  

I keep talking about this lens because of how good it is, and we're talking if memory serves me right about we're talking about $75.00 and change,  so it definitely re-affirms the great fun I've had, anybody can have, coming up with a lens like this, MADE BETTER by Jim Galli.  

I've spend some money on more famous lenses, don't regret it, and I'm happy I've got those lenses, and I know I'm preaching to the 'choir', but I gotta say, classic lenses are the best thing to ever happen to me as a photographer.  The best thing about it is the fact that how much the lens is worth, has absolutely NOTHING to do with what these lenses are capable of,  and this lens is capable of a lot. 

I want to thank you Jim, for what you did for me with this lens, and thank you for all your adventures, and experiments, which all of us should appreciate, particularly since you do all the work, while we get to sit back, and watch all these tests.

OK I'm done..........for a while, with this Turner Reich.  This is the last shot of 4 which I'll be putting on my personal website.   I'll be giving this lens and myself a rest.  I wonder if anybody else out there is like me, I get excited about a lens, work up a sweat doing shots over several days, even weeks, and then if I get close to what I want, I pause, and then realize that I'm mentally exhausted.  I just got through spending 4 hours doing this shot/trying to get it right, and I have a headache.

I love playing around w/this magnifier and bulb, and felt I hadn't done them justice yet, and decided to try a very oblique angle in shooting them and with the bulb on top for a change.  I've always been intrigued how light bounces off and through glass, and this magnifier has always represented a lens element to me, and the use of the Turner Reich just does it for me in conveying the elegance and mystery of glass.

This lens has style/panache.

     I changed the title, because the previous title was 'yucckkky' and stupid, so go ahead and 'wop' me, but the image deserved a better name.  I'm still dancing w/this lens, she won't let me go, so let the dance continue.  This is an 'itty bitty' glass curio, sitting on brushed aluminum, and I've leaned a 59 cent magnifier against it.