Cranberry Skins

Here are the skins of cranberries Sarah strained from the mix while making cranberry curd for a Thanksgiving tart. I like how they look like cellophane or vinyl. I've done nothing to these photos except minor adjustments for the color of the light from my flash and any variance in their exposure. These skins were shot on a piece of plexiglass with the light coming from below at the side, in order to highlight their translucent character.

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Pumpkin Berries, Just in Time for the Fall

Here is the stem of an odd plant we found while at the park. This stem is only about the width of a nickel. The plant had little green berries that resembled tiny pumpkins, and much smaller flower-like blooms with a very small berry inside. Violet crushed one of the berries and it contained a black gooey seed and smelled strongly of green peppers.

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85th Post, Some Planty Things

Let's take a short break from the bugs. Today we're looking at plantlife. The blossom above was about the size of a button on your cell phone. Judy and Kyla were there when this was shot, so they can correct my memory if I'm wrong ;-)

I understand why macro photographers shoot primarily bugs and flowers. They're endlessly fascinating and detailed. The smaller you go, the more detail you find. Bugs in particular are made up of all their plates of armor and bizarre hair and feathery scales, and spikes, and prismatic wings and club-like antennae and more.

But I contend that limiting one's self to bugs and flowers is an unfortunate form of tunnel vision. We've seen here at Morning Macro just how interesting the normal and boring items of our everyday life are. And, from recent conversations with some fans, I've found that this is part of the fun of the photos here—a game that site visitors play, trying to guess what these things are before reading to find out. It seems that the site's tagline, "think a little differently about the world around you" appropriately echoes the mindset of this audience.

So, this is my 85th entry to Morning Macro. I don't want to meta-discourse too long here, but I'm excited that soon we will see the 100th post here. That would put us at approximately 1 post for every 3.5 days, often with multiple photos. This venture is proving to accomplish my original goal: to make me create art regularly. So lets change that original goal to a new target.

I am going to aim for an art show of some of this content, and maybe some that has never appeared here. I also want to bring more Morning Macro to more people. This might be through something book-like, or video, or something else.

We'll figure out the details soon enough, but in the meantime, I want to ask my small (but loyal) audience to send a link to this site to their friends and family that you think might find this interesting, fascinating, beautiful, freaky, or any other emotion. In my mind if somebody has a vague to strong reaction to my photos, I've done some part of my job as an artist.

I want feedback and ideas for more photos. I want to know what you think might be interesting should we see it magnified. I want more ideas in more places. And we'll see where this little adventure goes.

I'm so thankful to those of you who have been following the past nine months.

Above, you see a cute little berry which was about the size of a BB. I like the fall-ish colors of this photo. Very Thanksgiving-y for those visitors from the U.S.

Below is a close-up of a spiky plant thing. I like the sense of dimension in this one as the object turns away from the lens. Also note the teensy tiny cobweb. I suppose it could be caterpillar silk or something else made by a little guest I'm not aware of. Either way, consider that this is the closest I can currently magnify an object, so the little guy that made that silk must be just about microscopic.

Thanks again for all your support and encouragement!

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When planet-sized dried berries attack

This photo is from the same bunch of berries you saw in the January 5 post, "Dried Berries." You can see the effect of stacking my lenses and combining them with the macro filter on my camera, which I mentioned last post.

This berry looks like a planet compared to the previous berry post where the bunch resembles, well, red meatballs. The dust (those little hairy things) is even more apparent in this shot than the previous one. I've found shooting tiny stuff that there is dust absolutely everywhere. It sometimes takes a little more work than you expected to get a clean shot with no dust.

I've read that dust is made up of clothing and furniture fibers, dead skin cells (we shed them like snakeskins in a wood chipper) and insect parts. Fly eyes, dead mites, etc... Apparently pillows double their volume of dust mites every year. I might have made that up.

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Dried Berries

As we're packing up the Christmas decorations, I noticed how dry the branches of berries had become. Some of them dried back to a reddish-brown. Others, like these, dried a bright red.

I like the intricate wrinkling of the berry skin that developed as the moisture receded from the berry's innards.

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