Welcome to Zooming Party. This site is an extension of my fractal gallery of 2007, Mandelmandala. I refer questions about the nature of fractals and the Mandelbrot Set to explanations I attempted to give there. In 2010 Benoit Mandelbrot, the Fractalist, died and Zooming Party is gratefully dedicated to his memory. The fractals shown in Mandelmandala were limited in depth by the 30,000 iteration limit of the fractal program I was using at the time. Since then, I began using Frederik Slijkerman's Ultra Fractal which has no iteration limit and the deeper fractals of Zooming Party are over the 200,000 iteration mark. The images in Zooming Party are organized in 9 galleries of 29 fractals each.

     The galleries each start out with 1 fractal (called The Mother) which is then zoomed 4 times and then those 4 images (Children, Generation 1) are zoomed twice and the resulting 8 images (Generation 2) are zoomed twice each again to obtain 16 more images (Generation 3). Each zoom is actually the result of 20-50 zooms into the exact center of a spot chosen until one arrives at what I call the Next Comparable Fractal. The NCF multiplies the image elements of the originally zoomed fractal while creating a distinctive center dependant on the spot zoomed. Every zoomable spot on a fractal has only one NCF which can be uncovered at a greater depth and precision. In the 20-50 zoom journey to the next NCF, all previous fractal images are recapitulated so one knows one is on the right track when the original fractal zoomed is obtained again: only 10 or so more zooms to go.

     The precision of Zooming Party fractals at the deepest level goes to over 200 decimal places. But not every potential spot zoomed will result in a beautiful image when the NCF is reached. That is what Zooming Party attempts to achieve by picking zooming spots for maximum aesthetic effect. Each gallery is organized to show the relationships between the shallower fractals at the beginning of the gallery and the deeper NCFs at 3 subsequent levels. All Mother fractals are originally zoomed from the Mandelbrot Set. After fractal generation, all images were then put through Ultra Fractal's anti-aliasing program (taking up to 50 hours processing time per image) to achieve the results shown on Zooming Party.

     The 9 galleries (Parties) are organized so the fractal images can be viewed two different ways. The first is a straight click-through beginning with The Mother and on through the 3 generations. This way one can see the complexity relationship between the generations, and the colors and shapes of the images have been constantly rotated to keep viewing interesting. The other way of viewing is from the Family Tree. Here, the entire gallery and its relationships is visible at once with all links expandable to full size images. Try viewing both ways, and please let us know what you think. Have fun at the Zooming Party!

     Thanks and honor is due to Daria Taback for making this site both user-friendly and beautiful. Thanks, Dar.

—Gene Taback