Well actually, this is a 1 inch patch of slime mold.
Yeah…appealing right? Well they’re oddly fascinating and so I had to stop and do a bit of focus bracketing for this shot of the little nodules in some moss. Slime molds used to be included in the Fungi kingdom, but not any more. Instead they are in a separate kingdom called Protista which basically collects all the stuff we don’t know much about. They are single celled organisms that can aggregate into enormous colonies - from small ones like this to some that are several meters square and weigh many pounds. They contribute to the breakdown of plant matter by feeding on microorganisms that flourish there. This is my first attempt to photograph them.
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The stack isn’t perfect, but I think I caught all the weirdness.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Tripod and possibly a CPL on the macro.
Lr for the initial processing, but not a lot since I always have to reprocess the TIF from Zerene. When it came back it needed some clarity, color saturation and a little more sharpening.
The colors and textures and contrast all work well to make this an interesting almost abstract image. Good job on the stack. Orange and green go so well together this time of year.
Kristen: Looking at the thumbnail I thought this was a bunch of oranges. I like that there is little hint of the scale and if you hadn’t mentioned it I would never have suspected that they were so tiny. Great find and a cool image. >=))>
Thanks @David_Schoen & @Bill_Fach - these little ones are the size of pin heads. Just a couple of millimeters across. I really should have stopped down more and taken fewer pictures, but I didn’t so it’s like a 40 image stack. Doh!
Amazing! I’ve never seen anything like this – maybe chanced across it but never SEEN it. The colors are perfect, as is the detail. A 40 image stack isn’t that outrageous. The main consideration is keeping BG elements soft, which you have done well here.
Thanks @Diane_Miller - this is a relatively large and colorful slime mold. They can be very tiny and hard to see because they blend in with wood and soil. I will probably try to find more next year.
