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First photo thread of the season.

W

Wallydraigle

Banned
There's still not a whole lot going on here yet, but I should be pretty busy in the next couple weeks. In the meanwhile, I have this:

Cladonia lichens are a favorite of mine. I've found several species. Some, like Cladonia cristatella are fairly common. Not all are as perfectly formed as this one. It reminded me of towers and citadels perched upon a hill on some other world. These lichens are one of the strangest looking and most unexpected things growing in my part of the world.

Another common species is Cladonia chlorophaea. There are several species that look very similar to this one, but I'm pretty sure of the ID. The cups don't stay fresh like this for very long. I don't know why I used an orange gel to make them look firey, but I think it looks pretty cool.

This one, Cladonia peziziformis is a bit rarer. I was lucky to find it, let alone growing up throught the yellow moss like this. The apothecia seem to be dancing around in a circle. The brown background and yellow forground give in an autumny look, but I took this just a couple days ago.

Coltsfoot is up and blooming already. It's one of the first here. As a member of the composite family, its floral disk is made up of many small florets. Each floret is of such smallness and delicacy that I was unable to capture it. These are just about three milimeters across. You can get a hint at their delicacy by noticing that the stigmas of the female florets are visible through the sepal of the male floret on the right, but my crude attempt doesn't do justice to them. In person, to one who really notices them, they are spellbinding.


I hope to have much more to show in the coming weeks. Thanks for looking!
 
Originally posted by: BW86
Awesome pictures! :thumbsup:

What camera?
Click to expand...


Thanks. These were done with my Canon EOS 20D, and my TS-E 90mm lens with extension tubes except for the two shots of the florets, which were done with my MP-E 65mm macro. All were done with flash lighting.
 
Damn, amazing photography, Wally. Thank you for sharing. Most of us would never look for the little things of beauty that are right in front of us.

I know nothing of the lifeforms you photograph, but that Coltsfoot looks like Dandelion. Are they related?
 
Originally posted by: Wallydraigle
Originally posted by: BW86
Awesome pictures! :thumbsup:

What camera?
Click to expand...


Thanks. These were done with my Canon EOS 20D, and my TS-E 90mm lens with extension tubes except for the two shots of the florets, which were done with my MP-E 65mm macro. All were done with flash lighting.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the info, great pics!
 
Originally posted by: HappyPuppy
Damn, amazing photography, Wally. Thank you for sharing. Most of us would never look for the little things of beauty that are right in front of us.

I know nothing of the lifeforms you photograph, but that Coltsfoot looks like Dandelion. Are they related?
Click to expand...


Thanks for the kind words.

Coltsfoot and dandelion belong to the same family, but aren't especially closely related. The composite family has something like 100,000 species all over the world. Dandelions are actually a non-native species that has been introduced here.
 
someone by me a film scanner, i have lots of pics on 4x5 film but no scanner

havent really used the digi in a while
 
I have a few more. No spiders yet, but they're starting to wake up now.

This is a striped squill I have in the yard. They're actually, Puschkinia libanotica, and not true squill at all, but people still call them that. I think I posted a shot of these before, but I don't really remember.

These are blue squill. They are Scilla siberica, and are true squill.

Just a junky blue hyacinth. These are imported by the millions and there isn't really anything special to it. Here's another shot of them.


Trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) are a perennial favorite. These grow in the eastern woodlands by the millions, but in my locale hardly any of them bloom. Where I found these they were carpeting the ground so thick that you couldn't drop a quarter and miss them, but I only saw a handful in bloom out of hundreds of thousands of non-bloomers. They have roots on the bottom of their tiny bulb that pull them deeper and deeper into the woodland soil as the years go by. Eventually they get so deep that it takes so much energy to reach the surface as all that they can't bloom anymore. It's the younger plants that bloom. These were all done with flash lighting. This shot is of the same group, but with a little different lighting. This is the only group of three close enough together to shoot that I found this year. Here is a close up of the flower. The petals and sepals are speckled with brown very delicately. They bend down though, and the whole plant is just a few inches high, so you have to really look to see it.

Dutchman's breeches are another favorite in the spring. These are Dicentra cucullaria. They are closely related to the garden plant bleeding hearts, which are Dicentra spectabilis. I like them both, but bleeding hearts are pretty white bread. Dutchman's breeches are a little more exotic. I stole these from a ditch alongside the road last year, and they are growing in the woods behind my house now. Here's another shot.


Just some moss capsules.

These capsules are a little different. I thought they looked like tiny Space Needles.

These are the same ones as above, but I put a blue gel on my flash this time just to be different.

This tiny spring azure is just the size of a fingernail. They never hold still for very long, so it was a challenge to get this. I hand to leave my flashes behind and work unplugged. The tops fo their wings are a brilliant blue, but they never open them up unless they're flying.


Thanks for looking!
 
Originally posted by: InstincT
Those are all seriously AMAZING. The Sping Azure is definately my favorite.
Click to expand...


Thanks! It took a little effort to get that one. I had to chase it around until it lit on the little cress flowers a few times before it would hold still long enough for me to get a shot off. It was only about four inches off the ground, so it took a little bit to get in position without scaring it away.
 
i am a big fan of macro photography and these are some of the most amazing pictures i have seen. incredible work wally.
 
Originally posted by: Sheepathon
I have a few pretty ones: Here

And some more pretty pictures from Tahoe a few weeks ago: Here

Enjoy 🙂
Click to expand...

I like the night shot at Tahoe but it is very grainy. A faster lens might allow you to lower the ISA and capture a clearer night shot.

What camera/lens?
 
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