Photography by Ruth Stennett

The late Ruth Stennett's work blends rockhounding/geology/gemology and photography to produce abstract art. She uses macro lenses and creative lighting conditions to show off the incredible colors and textures to be found in thin slabs of rock.

The typical scale of her typical work is shown in the photo at left below, while the finished photo appears on the right. (By the way, it is a flat slab.) Click the thumbnails to display a larger image.

Front lighting and back lighting reveal very different aspects in geodes, quartz, and other translucent crystalline structures. Compare the two photos of the thunder egg slab below. The shot on the left was taken with front lighting only, while the one on the right uses back lighting.

The front and back of the same slab can be quite different, as demonstrated by the two photos below of a piece of carnelian agate:

Other slabs, when photographed, fool the eye completely. Who would believe at first glance that the image below is a photograph of a flat surface (a piece of rutilated quartz)?

Ruth's book Hidden Beauty: The Art of Gemstone Photography (ISBN 1-56044-268-9) contains a wealth of images. Click here to see a sampling. Let Mother Nature show you her palette!

Comments from some reviewers of Hidden Beauty:

"Agate collectors and lapidaries, brush aside the other coffee table books and make room for Ruth Stennett's new publication. In it she combines her two hobbies - rock collecting and photography - with striking effect. Without the notes on the page you may never realize you are looking at a gemstone. The closeups of agate, jasper, bloodstone, and others look as abstract and impressionistic as any painter could dream up. Stennett's photographs remind us that we ultimately collect gemstones for the pure joy and beauty of them." Lapidary Journal

 

"A book of breathtaking photographs... These unusual photographs, which detail rocks from all over the world, are the first of their kind to be published in book form." The Olympian