After setting the silver-skulled figurine inside a box, putting film over it and waiting 15 minutes for everything to settle, Bredt Covitz walks to the laser. He lifts up the piece of cardboard blocking the red beam. The beam flies through a beam splitter and bounces off a pair of mirrors down onto the film.

Fifteen minutes later, the film has been developed and cleaned. Covitz, a senior in technology education, then mounts the image on a black board and turns a narrow light beam on it, revealing the figurine in all its red-tinted, three-dimensional glory.

Patience is a virtue for students in Ohio State holography classes, but it is a virtue that pays.

Cross-listed as art and physics classes, Art 455, H455 and 555 teach students how to make holograms. In 555 and H455, students also build diode lasers to make holograms. The class is taught by art associate professor Susan Dallas-Swann and physics professor Harris Kagan.

The class fulfills a requirement for the arts and technology major, although there are no prerequisites to take the class. Fifteen students are allowed in each course, Dallas-Swann said.

Eddie Canales, a sophomore in computer science and engineering, estimates it takes 50 minutes to shoot an average hologram.

Students start out shooting transmission holograms, which are similar to the encryption seen on credit cards, then move on to holograms with distinct images.

“I’d say at the beginning it goes kind of slow and you don’t get a clear picture of something,” Canales said. “The most difficult part is getting the first two stages.”

Another tough part of shooting holograms is that the results aren’t clear until the process is done.

“Pretty much, it’s an hour-long process for the holograms we’re making, and you can’t tell if you have a hologram until you finish all the process,” Covitz said. “As soon as you throw a photograph into developer, you can see the image.”

In contrast, taking a picture with photography is instantaneous.

“Photography, you can pick up a camera and shoot a picture, click-click,” he said. “In holography, it was 40 minutes setting up one shot.”

Andrea Mullenniex, a senior in arts and technology, said one has to count on making errors.

“You have to have a lot of patience,” Mullenniex said. “You spend a lot of time sitting around and waiting. You have to plan to screw up a couple of times. I don’t think anyone gets away with being perfect. Everyone has a mistake once in a while.”

Mullenniex worked in oil, acrylic and watercolor paints before getting into art and technology.

“For me, it’s a new medium, and it’s been around awhile,” she said. “I think working with it gives a new understanding of light, which is good for any aspect of art. No matter what you’re in, you have to understand light.”

Holography forced Mullenniex to adjust her method of creation, but taught her the value of planning.

“There is a sculptor who says that he doesn’t create a statue, he frees it,” she said. “When I was an artist with paint, I could go with the flow of things. You can kind of let the painting reveal itself to you.”

“With holography, you really have to have a plan,” Mullenniex said. “There’s a lot of things you have to do on the technical side, and you can’t just do it on the fly.”

The OSU art and technology classes’ holography show will be held June 5 from 5-8 p.m. on the first floor of Haskett Hall in and around the holography lab, room 135.