Kirlian photography

Idea

The Kirlian photography is about utilizing electric discharge from a conducting object to make nice-looking photographs. The setup is very simple and requires a high-voltage source with a transparent electrode to see through. The stack seen by the camera consists of the ground electrode made of aluminium foil, followed by the photographed object, which is polarized by the ground electrode. Next is the transparent insulator. In this experiment, a 4mm glass panel is used. The cheapest and easiest way to achieve a transparent high-voltage electrode is utilizing highly concentrated salt water. The power supply in this case is a neon transformer providing 10KV AC. It is vital to use AC current, as DC will just charge up the device, which is just a capacitor, and the arcs will quickly disappear.