This project required a technique that gets talked about a lot but not used very often. The task was to document a damascus blade, the first in a series.
A flat side view wasn't much of a problem. Click to enlarge, then you may have to click on the image again to make it open fully in your browser window:
#1
I thought we were done then Josh asked for a shot looking down the blade:
#2
This one is a composite of eight separate exposures, each sharply focused on a 1/8th section of the blade, tang to tip. It's tough (impossible) to shoot that close and have depth of field deep enough to get everything in focus with a single exposure. It worked (Josh was satisfied), but it's also kind of disorienting to look at. It's as if the eye/brain is confused by the absence of something it had expected to see: those inevitable areas of variable focus in most photographs that allow the viewer to judge relative distances etc. Weird.