The Huffington Post

Robert Buelteman is not your average nature photographer. The California-based artist shocks flowers and plant life with thousands of electric volts, capturing an entrancing image of the energy streaming through them.

The photographer’s method has roots in Kirlian photography, a process from the 1930s that is also known as “electrography.” First Buelteman carves at his plant specimens with a scalpel until they are sheer and then places them atop a metal sheet in between Plexiglas, surrounded by liquid silicone. He then channels his inner mad-scientist and passes an electric current through the plant using a car battery. The electrons shoot from the metal and through the skeletons of the translucent plants and Buelteman catches them by painting with a fiber-optic cable. The cable captures the glowing strands of light pulsing through the plants, by emitting a beam of white light, about the size of a human hair. This image is then transferred onto film. The gas around the plants ionizes when the plant is shocked, spurring a mystical blue haze around the flowers.

Photographer Robert Buelteman Shocks Flowers With 80,000 Volts Of Electricity