Rebekah Cameron built a camera obscura and devised these experimental shots. Pearls, rich colours, fruit and silver objects come out particularly well on the camera obscura lens. The lighting is instantly reminds us an old master portrait.

The Polaroid is now a museum piece.

There is much pleasure in taking a polaroid. Each shot is treated as special, there is the mechanical sound and feel of the paper ejecting, the waiting and watching and the slow alchemical change on the surface of the paper. I wonder if someone will make a digital polaroid that can replace it?

This is the petrifying well of Matlock Bath. Matlock Bath is a small spa town which was fashionable  in the Victorian Era for hydrotherapy, and now its amusement arcades, fish and chip shops and illuminations make it known as a seaside town without the sea and even the Alps of the Peak District. The petrifying well attracted the Victorian vistors who came to take the waters. Objects such as ‘wigs, booms and birds nests’ were left under the flow of the thermal water. The water is warm and rich in calcium and limestone and the objects became encrusted with mineral. The objects appeared to turn to stone.

I saw this news story on the BBC website. Hard-to-get footage of 10 metre long crystals in Mexico was shot by a BBC crew for a series called “How the Earth Made Us”.

I like the way these giant crystals make the scientists look like models from a train set or characters from an unconvincing sci-fi movie in a scaled up set.