Robert Buelteman is not your average photographer. He’s not out there taking pictures of lawn chairs and chain link fences, or endearingly fat babies in buckets. He is turning nature into a vision of electricity so difficult and dangerous that nobody else will even attempt it.

Here is a thorough breakdown of Buelteman’s process:

1. Buelteman begins by painstakingly whittling down flowers, leaves, sprigs, and twigs with a scalpel until they’re translucent.
2. He then lays each specimen on color transparency film and, for a more detailed effect, covers it with a diffusion screen.
3. This assemblage is placed on his “easel” — a piece of sheet metal sandwiched between Plexiglas, floating in liquid silicone.
4. Buelteman hits everything with an electric pulse and the electrons do a dance as they leap from the sheet metal, through the silicone and the plant (and hopefully not through him), while heading back out the jumper cables.
5. In that moment, the gas surrounding the subject is ionized, leaving behind ethereal coronas.
6. He then hand-paints the result with white light shining through an optical fiber the width of a human hair, a process so tricky each image can take up to 150 attempts.

The images may not look like much at first, until you consider the ridiculously tedious process behind it (an extension of Kirlian photography).

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some of his herb photography.

No doubt the cannabis movement to overgrow the government has progressed tenfold to the point where legalizing weed has become a national topic. However the news, never really captures the imagery needed to show the beauty of the plant. Steering away from typical photos depicting marijuana as a “dangerous drug”, Photographer, David Walter Banks delves into the medical marijuana community and captures the raw essence of what the plant and the culture surrounding it, is all about.

At a medical marijuana grow op in Georgia there are no labs, no beakers, no solvents needed to cut the finalized product… a simple clothesline is needed to dry the plant.

The plant is then taken to a medical marijuana dispensary and displayed for patients to purchase, like at this Cannabis Therapeutics dispensary in Colorado Springs.

This plant then helps medical marijuana patients like A.I.D.S. patient, Damien Lagoy — saying the plant helps him keep his food and medication down.

This “drug” can even be put into food, via THC, the main ingredient that gives users a high. tFS’ Cooking with Cannabis is perfect for those medical marijuana patients that can’t inhale the smoke.

These photos by Banks, are a welcome change from the imagery that is usually associated with the world of marijuana.

Google does some pretty cool stuff (while earning more money than most of us can imagine). Shit, that’s how most the people who read tFS have found our site.

Adding to the coolness factor, Google digitized thousands of images from LIFE Magazine. It’s an amazing catalogue of heritage for all of us, with pictures dating all the way back from the 1860s until the 1970s.

I decided to scan through the LIFE library and take a look at how marijuana use has been documented over the decades. Let’s take a trip through memory lane and see some visuals from the past…

(Warning: 9 more images so have the bandwidth ready.)

First, let’s start with a set of marijuana tracking & arrest images from 1969:

US Customs agents tracking nationwide marijuana ‘market,’ during “Operation Intercept.”

LA Country sheriffs pulling over Hell’s Angels members looking for anything illegal, including marijuana. Angel on left, being frisked, is known as Roseberry.

A car trunk full of marijuana trying to be smuggled into the US from Mexico.

Customs agents burning confiscated kilo-bricks of marijuana.

Now let’s check out some random images:

Research scientist Dr. Reese T. Jones, adjusting electrodes monitoring a volunteer’s brain response to sound during experiment at Langley-Porter Institute using controlled dosages of marijuana.

Failed cover image for a 1967 article on pot.

Now some actual cover images:

A 1996 Time cover on kids and smoking pot.

A 2002 Time cover about the growing issue of marijuana legalization.

Finally, one image that I have no idea what the hell is going on:

A boy, smoking weed… no date and no context.

Aaron Huey is a guy who can take some seriously good photographs. Best known for his Walk Across America, Aaron has been all over the Middle East – Pakistan, Georgia, Iraq, Afghanistan and others – covering items of cultural and political significance.

His 37 picture photo-set titled ‘Afghanistan Drug War‘ is of particular beauty. Here’s how Aaron describes it:

These images show poppy eradication in Nangarhar Province, East ofJalalabad and also outside Tarin Kowt, in Oruzgan Province.

Since his site is flash, I can’t link directly to the feature, so here’s the navigation path:

Homepage -> Features 1 -> Afghanistan Drug War

Go check it out and see the how a country most of us can’t pinpoint on a map heavily affects heroin production around the world.

Oh yea, all of Aaron’s images are available as limited edition prints in the following sizes – 11×14, 16×20, 20×24, 30×40 – and range from $500 to $4000. If you’ve got good taste, and plenty of spare cash, get in contact with him.

[image copyright Aaron Huey]

Roor is one of the premier glass manufacturers out today. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find or see any of their designs beyond what your local headshop stocks.

Un Sacco di Canapa (translation: a bag of hemp) has created one of the largest Roor user galleries on the internet.

With well over a hundred pictures in the gallery, you really get a feel for how Roor has branched off from their beginnings of spartan, no-nonsense design. From percolators to ash catchers, beaker shaped to hookahs – this gallery covers the whole spectrum of Roor products.

Read on to see more images.

“That tickles!”

With the New Year already upon us, plenty of organizations are looking back to the year of 2006. One of those organizations (that we especially like to keep tabs on) is the DEA.

They have just released ‘The Year in Pictures 2006‘ and it gives some pretty interesting views into the many different areas of drug trafficking.

From Tickle-Me-Elmo’s to homemade submarines, the DEA encounters strange happenings on a consistent basis.

[via Crime Sift]