dotPhoto recently added laser-engraved photo crystals that make unique gifts and awards.
Photo crystals are as permanent as anything you can you make with a photo.
The crystals are very dense and heavy with the largest weighing easily as much as a brick. If you ever wanted to put a photo in a time capsule, a photo crystal would be the technique because the image is preserved inside the crystal – not etched into the surface. Unlike paper, sculpture or just about any other image preservation technique I can imagine, photo crystals encase the image inside the medium.
How I tried to break a photo crystal
We don’t recommend this, but, as a test for this blog, I dropped the small photo crystal from successively higher heights onto the thin office carpet that covers our concrete slab. I started by pushing it off my desk – not an unlikely event in the life of a photo crystal. No marks or breaks. Then waist height, face height, and holding it over my head. I tried each of these in several “drop” positions with no damage, and surmise that you would have to hit a photo crystal hard with a hammer to break it, or drop it directly onto a cement floor – both less likely events.
Photo crystals can be used for special occasions and also as customized, memorable awards.
Each crystal is packaged in a luxurious blue box with a magnetic clasp and a royal blue cloth interior. The weight in your hand makes the item feel, well, weighty. Somehow, the permanence and heft of photo crystals makes them seem important.
They’re pure.
Light playing off and through a photo crystal adds another dimension of beauty that has fascinated people throughout history. These crystals have beveled edges that make them a pleasure to handle and display. You can set them up with your own lighting, or purchase a battery-powered pedestal (3 AAAs) that bathes your crystal with light from beneath with four light emitting diodes.
Since it’s hard to represent this kind of product online, I put together this little dotPhoto Show with images of crystals captured on my office window sill.
Click here to watch a dotPhoto Show about photo crystals.
Click here to purchase photo crystals.
Getting more out of dotPhoto 