Moss Spores Capsule...

..........beginning to open.







K5, 50mm. f2.8S Componon reversed on Pentax 200mm. f4.

Single, diffused flash.
32 manual exposures @ f4 on the Componon.
Pentax Bellows @ full extension.

2x slabs of 16 in Combine ZP, then Elements 11.



Thanks for looking,

Roger.

Stupendous! Composition, lighting. focus, transition to OOF areas, all spot on. Ultra-macro at its best .

Did you go hunting for a spore capsule in just the right state or was it luck? (I know, I know, that's an unfair question...)

Steve

Cheers, Steve!

There,s a hanging basket just by the front door, waitng to be planted-up.......in the meantime,, it's a mossery(?), where I have a look enery now & again.

There's plenty of these orange ones with red tips to choose from, so,.......all at variuos stages.

One (amongst many!) difficult things is gettIng the thing in position.This is the nearest yet to square onto the face where the spores will exit, once the arms move out of the way.

Roger.

Just noticed an interesting visual ambiguity in the picture - is the big red circular thing a protrusion or a hollow? It's a well known optical illusion, of course. But I've no idea how to light a picture such as this so as to make it unambiguous .

Steve

It's protruding.

I'll produce an image to illustrate the overall shape.

Roger.

Here you go, taken the day before!





Hope that helps,


Roger

Thanks, yes that's definitely a protrusion. Perception's a strange thing. I was sure that it was a protrusion in the original image - until I glanced at it again and it looked like a hollow. And after that it jumped from one to the other quite randomly. Perhaps I need new glasses ... .

Steve

One thing I love about macro is that it can show you how nature does various things - in this case using an iris type mechanism to open the capsule.
Photographing that was a masterwork.

I totally agree.

Regards
Mike

Lovely colours.

Yes it does! As a retired bio-scientist I really like 'the day before'. Your first photo is fascinating and colourful, but the optical illusion of concave or convex bothered my rather factually-orientated brain .
Fabulous photos, both of them.

Martin