Amazing flame fractals take your breath away

Water Lilies

Witness the beauty and elegance of mathematics with 50 breathtaking fractals.

Physicist, aerospace engineer, and artist Roger Johnston created these Fractal Flames with Apophysis--a freeware Windows application with which you can design and render fractal flames. According to http://apophysis.wikispaces.com/ and http://www.flam3.com/, Fractal Flames were created by Scott Draves in 1992 and are an "extension of the iterated function system class of fractals".

According to Johnston, the process is more complicated than you might think:

"The process of creating these fractals often requires hours of manipulation of function coefficients and palettes followed by perhaps hours in final rendering to create a final image. I hope you find reward in viewing them as I am rewarded by creating them. In each of these fractals, the whole of science, math, and music precipitates onto the canvas, never seen, never envisioned before."

Johnston has partnered with visual artist Michael Luckman to make his fractal creations even more accessible. Through the site Fractal Art in Motion, the public can purchase Johnston's fractals as full-size prints and giclees. The pair has kindly granted us permission to republish a collection of the images on TechRepublic.

Photo credit: Fractal Art in Motion

For more information on Roger Johnston's fractal creations, please check out Fractal Art in Motion.