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Confession by way of a few macro shots

Hi everyone,

bad news: I've gone astray and flirted with the neighbors' wives. Apart from Nepenthes, I now have a whole stable of sundews as well as two cephalotus. Why? Last week I came home with my newly purchased 105 mm macro lens, all gung-ho to take some real close close-ups of my D. binatas (some of the sideshow plants I keep outside the Nepenthes shadehouse). To my great horror I found that a full week of daily 34 C and no rain had killed them all to the last man. Infuriated at having no pretty dew drops to practice my macro skills on, I made a few calls in the CP community, and three days later I was proud owner of 30 different droseras which now populate the tanks that in colder days serve for wintering my lowland neps. Also, I guess having sold off two-thirds of my 300 neps (I'm moving to Borneo in a while and can't take them with me) has taken a greater toll on my soul than I had anticipated.....if I can't have hundreds of neps around me, I need to substitute with something else - even if the substitute is a genus that for years I've been ridiculing as "eye cancer catalysts" onnacounta their insidious tininess.

The cephalotus was a gift. And believe me - the cuteness factor is so strong with this genus, I'm fixing to get me a whole acre of it! (OK, a whole windowsill first)..

So here are some photos. Most of the droseras are still babies (under a centimeter across), but pretty nevertheless.

D. dielsiana
Droseradielsiana080626.jpg


C. follicularis
Cephalotusfollicularis080626_1.jpg


D. burmannii
Droseraburmannii080626.jpg


C. follicularis
Cephalotusfollicularis080626_2crop.jpg


D. paradoxa
Droseraparadoxa080620_3.jpg


Droseraparadoxa080620_1.jpg


(For the gear queers out there: Pentax K10D, Sigma 105 mm macro, an entire stack of extension tubes with a total of 64 mm, and a cheapa$$ tripod that's causing me endless grief...)
 
Hilarious! I can feel the disdain you had by reading your vivid descriptions. That first photo (as they all are) is fantastic. I guess it's true what they say: one man's "sideshow" is another man's treasure!

Thanks for sharing your transition to the darkside.

xvart.
 
Thanks for you kind words. They're nice enough pix, I guess...I only wish they were sharp! (dang that &^%$! tripod!)

transition to the darkside.

Dark side indeed....after four hours of being glued to the viewfinder, wrestling with depth-of-field values below two millimeters (and no macro rail!), I feel terminal myopia coming my way like a rocket-powered steamroller...
 
Hans - Now all you need is a nice fat bug dead center on that paradoxa leaf!

xvart.
 
Fat chance - there's no dew on the leaf :) (tjhe plant's still reeling from relocation shock)
 
just add
superglue,...... jk.
 
Deja vu! No Neps this time!
 
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