No. 1 for me. You've caught the flow and textures of the opening bud perfectly.

Steve

Detail within detail within detail ... wonderful.

Steve

Those first two are a master class in seeing texture and form in the mundane. Superb!

Steve

You're welcome to some southern mud... instead of the snow, not the coffee... unless you want to try Baldrick Blend.

Steve

Are you sure you didn't develop the film in Saltaire's finest and drink the developer...?

Steve

The result of an hour sitting in the garden and looking for birds was two wood pigeons, a blackbird, a robin and a probable house sparrow. At least it was done yesterday in dry weather. Sit outside for an hour today and you'd dissolve.

A couple of positives, though. The robin sang quietly but beautifully for me. And I now know what's spreading earth onto the path outside the back door - it's the blackbird .

Steve

Thanks folks. Appreciated.

Gareth - Very perceptive, white balance is off. I deliberately used a warm light source which is responsible for the overall yellowness. The pads of the cactus (at the root of the spines) are a sort of creamy white in natural light and the flowers a softer yellow. Here's the second picture quickly adjusted to give a rough visual match to the cactus that's currently by the side of the screen in natural light. Better or worse? Depends on the artist's intent .




Steve

A flowering cactus near the computer had been beckoning for some time. So after some long and intense Zoom meetings during the last few days, a relaxing evening with camera and cactus seemed to be in order. Here are the results. K3 + Irix 150mm macro, focus stacked with Afinity Photo (36 images for the first, 41 for the second).

Reviewing the images for the second revealed that a very tiny bug had been wandering around the flower, a different place in each image. Stacking the images has made it much less obvious, but it's there (in several places) if you know what you're looking for. Happy bug hunting!

Thoughts, comments welcome as usual.

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Steve

A lovely and varied set that captures a distinctly wintery mood .

There's definitely a 'Q-ness' to these images. Something to do with the reds and perhaps the depth of field and tonal range - hard to pin it down. Worth trying out RAW, but when the JPEGs are as good as this it hardly seems worth the time and effort!

Steve

But 2015 was only the 'best before' date. Put them with something with a lot of flavour and you'd not have known the difference... Possibly .

Now, if the can had started bulging, that would have been a definite 'no' .

Steve