Grass Seed Stalk

We've looked at grass seed stalks before when they were fresh picked and green. Here is the same thing, dried and after dropping all the seeds. The stalk has changed color to a deep ruby, and the little caps that had secured the seeds to the stalk are all that's left. Very cool, I didn't know what to expect, and it's fascinating!

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Dried Bay Leaves, in need of anti-aging cream

In keeping with the spices and seasonings theme, here is a photo of the underside of a dried bay leaf. I hadn't expected so much detail to be visible, and I'm quite impressed by what we can see at this level of magnification.

You can see an enlarged section of the bay leaf below. This is blown up to almost a 1:1 pixel ratio to what was captured by the camera. See what I mean about sharp lines being nonexistant in the tiny world?

I've figured out my magnification level, in case anyone was interested. My hacked-together lens setup is getting me roughly 6x magnification from what we see with our eyes. Now, keep in mind, that number is related to the sensor size in my camera, meaning that the lenses are enlarging the subject 6x from reality and that is the image I snap with my camera. So the 800 pixel wide images you see here in my blog (the enlargement directly above not included) at roughly 175mm (depending on your computer's display) are about 8x the size of my camera sensor.

This puts the true enlargement of my photos here on the MorningMacro at 19.4x the size they are in real life.

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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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