038: Beanie Bird

This is unusual...
A fluffy bird toy with a sparkly background! It looks quite like a shower of sparks, actually. If it were more yellow the photo might seem to have been taken in a steel mill. That's an even stranger prospect, something you might come across at pictureisunrelated.com.

I used the same lens and flash setup as I usually have been (as I'm lazy,) and placed a curved, crinkled sheet of kitchen foil behind the bird head.

037: Cardamoms

A little scene of cardamom pods that look like people in a crowd; Many of them seem to be looking upwards, in the way I see it.
The pods were well past their best. They were stuck to a sheet of glass with small blobs of blue plasticine, hence the avoidant high angle; I cropped the photo mostly to avoid some stray blue blobs at the lower sides that I didn't notice before. A piece of pale yellow paper ran under the glass and emerged upwards behind as a backdrop.

Settings are 1/180 sec, ISO 100, 50mm M42 with 20mm extension. I used the flash firing up and forward with a white refector above. I tried f/4 to start, but I settled on f/5.6 as it provided a more rounded exposure.
I also couldn't help adjusting the colours from the RAW file, as there is a very stylised and faintly strange feel to this scene. The added contrast also improves the texture of the pods.

036: Lemon & Cloves

This is an old pomander, several years old. No longer citrus-scented, it is now utterly mummified and smells of the pot pourri that it has been lying in. But the mostly-broken cloves that pepper its dusty surface are full of interesting detail and patterns, so they get a big close-up here.
I used my normal manual flash setup with 20mm extension, and at f/5.6 as this aperture usually gives a correct exposure. I used a close tent of white polystyrene boards, foil on top by the flash and a piece of white paper under the front of the pomander.
The paper was close at first and produced a lot of up-light that flattened the image somewhat, so I pulled it away a bit to let an accent of shadow back.

035: Coloured Wires

These is nothing more than a bundle of electronic wires from a box in the attic. However, they come in an tangled array of randomised colours which can be conducive to an interesting image.

034: Pear Tree Bud

I have a habit of going on about texture and magnification, but I can't help but be fascinated by the way things look close up. The transluscent, parchment-like quality of the bud's skin is hardly visible to the naked eye (at least mine,) but close up like this you can clearly see its bronzed skin-like texture and the occasional vein. The occasional wartyness of the bark is shown up as a collection of fine, swollen splits.
Apart from this, the main reason I took this photo was to depict the shape of the twig at the emergence of a bud. The branch crooks quite far sideways at every bud and presents itself as a series of zigzagged Y-shapes.
I also just noticed that every bud grows about 120 degrees around from its neighbour, creating a fascinating triangular helix pattern along the axis of the twig. I don't know how common this is, as I'm not a botanist; but it certainly occurs on pear trees.
Aperture f/5.6, all other settings as yesterday.

033: Turnip Textures

f/8, 1/180 sec. ISO 100, 50mm M42, 52mm extension, low power flash, white reflectors. Another one-off shot. A little sharpening and contrast added afterwards.

OK, it's a detail of a turnip. But forget about that for a moment and consider how it seems to resemble the surface of a boiling, swirling gas giant planet... Now there's imagination at work! In this way it reminds me of some of the space travel effects in Flash Gordon (You know, that one. The fantastically camp movie.) There'd be no turnips on Mongo, I'd bet.
In fact, I'd bet that a great deal of us have never eaten a turnip, in the same way very few have sampled kohl rabi. Apart from at this time of year, they're quite a rare occurence in your local grocery, and not many people have much to say or suggest about them. My advice is NEVER boil them, consider eating them raw in salads, and also try to find the yellow-orange ones. They have the best taste.

This image has reminded me that I have to be more careful controlling the lighting on very high magnification shots, as contrast can start to drop off quite dramatically if light bounces around too enthusiastically in front of the lens element. I used a decent hood, but the shadow areas look very washed out, and turning up the contrast too much affects the rest of the image badly.

032: Ear of Wheat

f/8, 1/180 sec. ISO 100. Same lens setup as yesterday, but with flash, grey foam backdrop and white reflectors at side and close underneath. A tiny bit more magenta to the white balance, a little sharpening and extra contrast finished it off.
This is the tip of one of a few ears of wheat that grew in the garden last year, and have been sitting in a vase on the windowsill since. The bird seed feeder situated above their growing site is their most likely origin. As that patch was fairly disorganised, I just let the grasses grow, and now their plump seed heads provide me with an interesting subject to photograph in detail. Close up you can see its delicate saw-edged tips that could snag on an animal's fur and break off some seed heads, distributing them. Although the only furry animal the right size to effectively reach the ear would be a dog or a very large cat, none of which I usually see around here. But a fox... I might see a few more wheat grasses this year, providing I don't pull them up as weeds first.
I should probably make up a bird table (or possibly a bowl below the feeders) to catch grains when the birds peck out several at a time to take one in the bill.