View allAll Photos Tagged blackopal
For today's get away, let's try our luck at Lightening Ridge, a small opal mining town in outback New South Wales. Here the landscape is pockmarked with mine shafts, mostly abandoned and crudely covered up with wire mesh or planks of wood. Lightening Ridge is famed for black opals and other gemstones, hot water springs and fossils dating back to the Cretaceous period, 110 million years ago.
I took this sunrise shot using the rickety windlass and bucket as icons of this unique mining town in what seems like the middle of nowhere. Yet Lightening Ridge is a vibrant community of fossickers, fortune seekers, colourful eccentrics and assorted characters as one would find anywhere. There is an optimism in the community, everybody is busy looking for their next lucky strike in this little relic of the wild frontier.
I couldn't believe it when I saw the first shot of this tiny jumping spider. What incredible colors like a black opal! I have found it on the bark of a common spruce and it was only about 4 mm (0.16 inches) small. I had to focus manually and this is the best shot before the little creature jumped out of my sight.
Ich musste schon zweimal hinschauen, als ich das erste Bild von dieser Springspinne betrachtet habe. Diese Farben! Wie ein schwarzer Opal! Ich habe die Spinne auf der Rinde einer ganz gewöhnlichen Fichte gefunden. Die Kleine war nur etwa 4 mm 'gross'. Ich musste manuell fokussieren, und dies ist meine beste Aufnahme, bevor sie ihrem Namen alle Ehre gemacht hat: Springspinne!
An old derelect Opal mining machine remains at Nettleton's First Shaft Lookout, just outside of Lighting Ridge, New South Wales, Australia.
You can track it and stalk it for years, always thinking it's in the next bucket load. It’s like being a hunter and opal is your prey. And then one day, when all hope seems lost, you'll spot a flash of colour in the dull, brown clay. Black opal. There is nothing like it on earth.
Lightning Ridge, Outback NSW
April 2019
Details best viewed in Original Size
Black Opal Pool is the first pool one encounters after crossing the bridge across the Firehole River and proceeds from the parking area to the Biscuit Basin geothermal field. The murky waters of the pool fill a creater created by the violent explosions of 1934.
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Amigo is an Italian who migrated to Australia at 22 years of age in 1970. He eventually ended up in Lightning Ridge to try his luck at Opal mining. The town is famous for it's black Opals.
His mineral claim became his camp and this camp kept growing and growing Rock by Rock over the last 30+ years. He has not found his luck in Opal mining but certainly found his passion in growing this gem of a Castle in the Outback, a giant Romanesque construction made from more than twenty thousand ironstone boulders-each carried out from the bush in a rucksack. He intends it to be a home for a princess (or Amigo's Queen) he has yet to meet.
Amigo has no building qualifications and didn’t follow any plan. Instinct was his only guide, design being created just one rock at the time.
The Castle is not approved by the local council so there will probably never be a roof. But it's Amigo's home, with underground passages and secret chambers.
I feel very privileged to have spent some good time with Amigo, he showed me around in and out, took me up to the tower (climbing ladders) and shared some of the secret chambers and stories.
Good on ya Amigo! Wishing you all the best...cu next time
NHMLA-20689
Locality: Virgin Valley, Nevada
Part of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, Gem and Mineral Hall Collection.
Australia. Almost a matched pair, one a little larger (2.7 x 1.8 x .5 cm) than the other. (2.4 x 1.6 x .6 cm) Flashing irridescent blue. Anyone wonder why it's called Lightning Ridge? These are like lightning bolts that flash through the stones as they move.
Come in. sit down...have a glass and relax...feel the coolness of the evening after the heat of the day..
I am just relaxing, enjoying and celebrating the arrival of summer after a bit of gardening...I think winter has finally left us...maybe we will get a spring next year..
Taken, created and upload for one or more of the challenge running at the groups...
"Lazy Days of Summer" at Tis' The Season"... www.flickr.com/groups/tistheseason/discuss/72157624173641...
"Show Me Summer" at ✢~ Legacy Gallery ~✢.... www.flickr.com/groups/lirodongallery/discuss/721576240497...
"Summer Bliss at Heaven's Shots ... www.flickr.com/groups/1277923@N24/discuss/72157624049874211/
They will be closing soon, so if anyone is interested, better head over there and post your best summer pics...lol
Cover art by Denis McLoughlin.
J. Lane Linklater was a pseudonym used by Alexander William Watkins.
Originally published in hardback with alternative artwork by M.S. Mill Company in 1947.
Very expensive. That play of color both captured my imagination and swallowed my wallet in one swell foop. And they're darn difficult to photograph too!
Check out this bad boy! This is the first ring I have made with this lab created black opal. The lab opal looks great with the black onyx and has masculine look with a punch of color.
A fairly large piece of Lightning Ridge (Australia) Black Opal. I tried to capture all the little plays of light (sometimes referred to as "fire") going on in the opal's surface.
Update: A-ha! I finally found some information on this item. It is "Harlequin Prince Opal, 215.85 carats, Lightning Ridge." I nailed identifying it! The link to all the info is here.
Update 2: the International Gem Society (IGS) used this picture for an article on appraising opals.
This is a black opal, found in Honduras, cut, grounded and polished in Germany by a friend of mine.
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Das ist ein schwarzer Opal. Gefunden in Honduras, geschnitten, geschliffen und poliert in Deutschland von einem Freund von mir.
Yay! It's done......geeeez! This piece had a long gestation. First, the client had been hanging on to this lovely stone for over 10 years......it's a beautiful stone....but has a bit of an unusual cut, and then it took us another full year and two weeks from our first contact to make it a reality. It is made from 20.9 grams of 18k gold, which I alloyed and milled myself, has cast and fabricated parts....and includes an integral mechanism which allows the stone to be clicked into positions which will display either the high-domed front of the stone, or the much lower domed back of the stone. In either position the reflective dish displays a lively magnified image of the obscured side. It was a real pleasure to make....And I thank her, my patron! Thanks, Beth!
This is the central rotating bezel assembly of this job......which is nearing completion. This is the back of the stone.
I secure the pattern on a block of blue wax to make it easier to hold while I detailed the surface features. During the time it takes to carve it all out, it's best not to hold the pattern with your fingers.....as all that handling gradually wears the sharpness off the corners and high spots..
Yay! It's done......geeeez! This piece had a long gestation. First, the client had been hanging on to this lovely stone for over 10 years......it's a beautiful stone....but has a bit of an unusual cut, and then it took us another full year and two weeks from our first contact to make it a reality. It is made from 20.9 grams of 18k gold, which I alloyed and milled myself, has cast and fabricated parts....and includes an integral mechanism which allows the stone to be clicked into positions which will display either the high-domed front of the stone, or the much lower domed back of the stone. In either position the reflective dish displays a lively magnified image of the obscured side. It was a real pleasure to make....And I thank her, my patron! Thanks, Beth!
My father was an opal miner from Lightning Ridge.N.S.W. Australia and so I have many different sorts of opals. There are Boulder opal, black opal and jelly opal,,,, and milky opals here. The orange one looks like burning embers in a fire when you turn it....that is probably my favourite. Lightning Ridge is in the outback and is famous for its Black Opals.
Louis C. Tiffany (1848-1933)
Pendant necklace
New York City, ca. 1910
Gold, black opal, demantoid garnets, sapphires
Lent by Mrs. Deedee Wigmore
unfortunately, the opal appears to be badly crazed.
Black Pearl, Valletta Harbour, Malta, Aug 1990. Built 1909 as Black Opal. In 1959 rigged as a barque and re-named Aeolus. !973 suffered an engine fire and made it back to Malta where she sank. Raised in 1979 but sank again in 1981, refloated and taken to her current position 1987 and converted to a bar/restaurant.
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Yay! It's done......geeeez! This piece had a long gestation. First, the client had been hanging on to this lovely stone for over 10 years......it's a beautiful stone....but has a bit of an unusual cut, and then it took us another full year and two weeks from our first contact to make it a reality. It is made from 20.9 grams of 18k gold, which I alloyed and milled myself, has cast and fabricated parts....and includes an integral mechanism which allows the stone to be clicked into positions which will display either the high-domed front of the stone, or the much lower domed back of the stone. In either position the reflective dish displays a lively magnified image of the obscured side. It was a real pleasure to make....And I thank her, my patron! Thanks, Beth!
A close-up of one of the opal gift sets that were given to each of the presenters at our conference workshop. Opal is the official Australian and South Australian State gemstone, and these sets seemed to thus be appropriate gifts at an international Earth Science (Geology/Geophysics) event. For scale, the larger stone is 8 mm across. I personally like the dark matrix of "black opal" in comparison with white or milky opal - the dark background greatly enhances the colors. The triplet presentation (i.e., a thin slice of opal sandwiched between a dark base layer and a clear, domed quartz cap) makes the stones more robust (and cheaper to produce!).
@MomentsForZen #MomentsForZen #MiniMomentsForZen #MFZ #MMFZ #iPhone #iPhone6sPlus #iPhoneography #TinyShutter #iPhoneCamera #CameraPlus #PhotoshopExpress #PhotoshopFix #ExifEditor #Opal #GemstonesP #PreciousStones #Gems #BlackOpal #Triplet #FireOpal #Colors #Colours #Macro #Closeup
This shows the rotating and click assembly all tied in with the tiny rivet. The double-ended hardened white gold spring which supplies push to the click mechanism is 'free floating' and is only under full tension when the back plate is installed. It was critical to make sure it that all fine tuning and potential problems be discovered or anticipated before the blackplates were tightened down....as it would've be a pain to remedy them after.
This is all opal. It is not an assembled stone. An assembled stone is like a layer cake consisting of a thin slice of light opal forming the top, glued to a dark base which ads depth of color and durability to a formerly "blah" opal. They can be very beautiful.
This is properly mounted so that its underside is exposed and I could verify that is is not "backed."