Mouldy cheese on a mousetrap.
I retrieved this from my mother-in-law's attic. It's been there about six weeks I guess but the house is unheated so at this time of year the mould develops slowly. You may be reassured that no mammals were harmed in the taking of this photograph, though I suspect with the current trap-rate the biggest risk was to me!
Thanks for looking.
[Shot in daylight using a black cloth background, a bean bag to steady the camera and timer release (and I remembered to limit the auto-ISO this time!). I tried several apertures and eventually went with this compromise of DoF once I had worked out that some of the fuzziness is due to the mycelium of the fungus rather than the focus (sigh). Developed and moderately mangled in LR - colours strengthened (especially orange and yellow), some attention to sharpening and a relatively heavy (for me) dark vignette to de-emphasise the spring.]

Tags:   bait decay Macro Mondays orange off-putting unpleasant escape rodent Say Cheese! yellow trap mousetrap hairy waiting furry macabre mould black background disgusting gross

© All Rights Reserved

Satsuma on a lightbox.

Tags:   Nikon D90 sunset sun spots peel It's A-Peeling To Me sunrise satsuma orange Macro Mondays

© All Rights Reserved

Ball-bearing in a box of pins.
I quickly learnt from this that you should never photograph silver balls unless you have complete lighting control and, preferably, an invisible camera. Hope you enjoy it anyway. HMM!
Thanks for looking - comments and criticisms welcome!
[Daylight on tabletop, using a tripod mount and shutter release delay timer. I masked some of the reflections with black card and cloth... not too successfully! RAW processed initially in LR with exposure and tonal balance adjustments and strongish dark vignette and a little sharpening. Converted to B&W Using Topaz B&W Effects filter - high key and monochrome quad tone.]

Tags:   silver opposites sharp different reflections grain pins points contrast ball difference diversity sphere steel B&W metallic Macro Mondays metal

© All Rights Reserved

Crocus.
Spring came to my garden yesterday and the crocus were out in the sun and still in relatively good shape (before the rain today). So a couple of too-quick shots and then a play with the processing.
Lovely flowers with dramatic colour. Hope you enjoy it anyway and thanks for looking :)
[MBS: Hand-held in daylight. Processed and cropped in LR, mainly for colour drama. Background masked in PS; canvas enlarged and rotated to sweeten the symmetry. Minor mangle in Topaz Detail. Metadata magic in iMatch and published direct from LR to Flickr: my usual workflow ;)]

Tags:   spring colour contrast stamen crocus nature flower orange hot shadows bulb happy flame saffron purple lilac veins fire petals black background macro

© All Rights Reserved

Titanium watch.

I first fell in love with titanium when I discovered that my neighbour had a made poker out of a rod of pure titanium (OK, at least one of us is weird!). The strange thing about it was that it was amazingly light, like heavy plastic or wood (it’s about 60% of the density of steel) but when you put it in the fire rather than melting or burning the handle just became hot. Definitely an odd challenge to our sensory preconceptions…

Titanium is stronger than steel and has a dark grey muted lustre. The best thing for me, and why I love it, is that it has a crystalline structure that sparkles in the right light, often in blues and purples (the poker was definitely purple though whether that was the heat or the purity I’m not sure). I did try to take a picture of the sparkles for this week’s MM but it ended up looking like a bad case of colour noise – perhaps another time.

Enough ramble, to the image. This is my much loved rather battered watch with its titanium case. There are probably three metals in the picture – gold makes a great contrast in colour, shine and reflectivity, and the watch face is in some brushed white metal, probably some steel alloy at a guess.

Thanks for looking (and reading if you got this far!). Hope you enjoy it HMM :)

[Top lit with daylight (yesterday's evening gloom more like – I was running late). Some extra light reflected on to the front just using white paper. Tripod; delayed release. I don't think I have ever taken a picture at f57 before lol.
Almost no mangling (hurrah!), just basic exposure stuff in LR and metadata in iMatch. No vignette… no really, I can do photos without one, scary though ;)
And you score 20 points if you’ve worked out that the date on the watch is wrong.:) Have fun!]

Tags:   second white titanium letters macro grey Made of Metal purple time pressure late time gold hands watch Macro Mondays metal

© All Rights Reserved