FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[vic rzonca]

Amazing John ! Here's to careful field collectors and the beauty the bring.

[John S. White]

Sorry Elise, not to have responded sooner. The "satellite" crystals on the minaret quartzes are all attached by their prism faces to prism faces of the stem. As you turn the pieces, all of the transparent crystals attached to each prism face of the milky stem reflect light simultaneously with the large prism face on the stem itself. They really are quite wonderful and I treasure these little gems of which I have a few. Their production, as is usually the case with fine minerals, did not last very long.

[John S. White]

I have been experimenting with Photoshop a little bit and here is the result of my best effort. I posted this photo a couple of days ago before doctoring.

[Matt_Zukowski]

Cool specimen and quite an improvement in the look of the picture. alteredDSCN1485.jpg seems to show the glassiness of the qtx xtals much better. You also changed the background - I can see the jaggies at the bottom of the photo. How long did it take you to do this? Not dismissing Jeff Scovil's admonition that the only way to get a good photo is to take a good photo in the first place, I am beginning to think that some post processing of min picts may be useful because i find it hard to capture glassiness and some other features from camera shots alone. What do you think?

[John S. White]

It took perhaps a half hour because I am a novice with Photoshop and I learn by trial and error instead of using the tutorial. I have not had similar success with some other attempts.

[zanthal]

It's a very good photo. The sample looks like a chandelier.

[John S. White]

The Denver Show was very good in terms of finding new things for my quartz collection. Here are some of what I added.

Oops, should have removed the price tag on the last photo. This is Vic's photo and $900 is not what I paid for it.

[John S. White]

Here is another angle for the quartz in the last photo.

[nimfiara]

Hello Mr. White:

I'm really impressed with your collection.

Its minerals are truly interesting and quite different to the ones I'm used to seeing in Spain.

That quartz with inclusions of hematite is spectacular and the other bent, it seems that the sun melted like wax.

Beautiful!

Do you take many years collecting?, When I grow up I want to be like you!! ^-^

[John S. White]

Hi Nimfiara:

Good to hear from you and I enjoy your postings. I have been collecting since I was about 14 years old. At that time one was forced to collect more or less in isolation, things like FMF did not exist. I was a member of the local mineral club and that was my only contact with other collectors. There were not even large minerals shows that I could go to in order to meet other collectors. I believe that today, with all of the resources now available, a person can become a very effective mineral collector in a very short time. There is so much information about minerals and mineral collecting that is no further away than your computer, all you have to do is want to learn and the rest is easy.

Good luck! But don't rush it, take your time. Let your focus evolve slowly. You have a whole lifetime of collecting ahead of you, enjoy it.

[nimfiara]

I'm glad you like my messages.

[John S. White]

For some reason Jordi wanted to post this on FMF and I have agreed. What is included here is but a small portion of my collection, I will add photos as I take them. In the meantime I hope that what is shown here will be of interest to some of you.

To see it click on the image or in this link and you will access to the PDF with all the images

[Carles Millan]

[Tobi]

Dear John,

i fully agree with Carles: I just browsed your PDF file and i admire your passion to share your collection's treasures with us other collectors!

Thanks :)

[Pierre Joubert]