Peacock Feathers

We recently stayed at our friends' beautiful country house and I had a little time to shoot around the property, finding some neat little things I'll post here in the coming days.

One part-time resident of the farmhouse is a peacock who wanders on and off the yard occasionally, eating Scott's lavender. The peacock has left many of his stunning feathers around the place, and I was lucky to have the opportunity to shoot them and see what makes them shine like they do.

The photo above is of an area about an inch wide. I then zoomed in for the photo below, which is an area about 5mm wide. The individual strands of feather (called barbs) appear to be metallic themselves, and made of little sections.

What follows are a few more microphotos of the different parts of the peacock feather. Some look like christmas garland or pine tree branches to me; more amazing evidence of nature's incredible symmetry and cohesiveness, or its lack of imagination. Depends on your viewpoint.

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Fly Me to the Moon, or Right Into a Lightbulb, if You're a Moth

And here come the creepier crawlers!

Above is the face of a moth. This was a rather small moth, actually. A larger moth would have had a larger head with more "feathers" and bigger eyes. However, I am happy with this shot anyway, because it's pretty much in sharp focus. Which is hard for such a tiny thing.

In other tiny-things-in-sharp-focus news, below is some sort of fly on a leaf. Maybe I'll find it's actually a bee and have to correct it like my last post.

One interesting detail I noticed is the little fly feet. I guess I've never seen or noticed what fly feet look like. Take a look at them, they're two little claw things, and two sticky pads. This particular fly appears to be missing the claw/pads on its left middle leg.

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Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board

The delicate features of a feather. These are the tiny strands that interlock with eachother like velcro to form the uniform surface of the feather. With time and use, those little hairy strands get worn off and lose their strength, and the feather gets fluffy, just in time to be molted.

I like how the photo below bears a resemblance to the teeth of a comb.

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Feather

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

Another example of the beautiful patterns made by bubbles in ice. This image is so feathery, the bubble trails look almost soft. I'm always amazed at what I get to see through the lens when shooting macro.

The quality of light is important in these photos, as well as any photo. In this case, I was lucky that my flash setup wasn't doing what I needed it to, and I had to use the ambient available light, a mix of daylight and indoor incandescent. It was my good fortune that this light worked well to enhance the softness of the image.

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