Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Images taken in a controlled environment or with a posed subject. All subject types.

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Tim Boomer
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Location: Vacaville, California, USA
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Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by Tim Boomer »

I live in Vacaville, which translates to "cow town." And while most folks try to avoid the landmines that our bovine friends leave behind, I occasionally inspect these droppings just in case there is something of interest to be found and photographed. What on Earth could possibly be interesting enough to justify inspecting cow dung? The dung cannon fungus, of course! I'll leave it to the curious reader to learn more about this fascinating organism, but I think everyone can appreciate its beauty (so long as the substrate is overlooked).

I collected a bit of said substrate, added some distilled water, and after a day or so, some goodies began to develop. The dung cannon is often bejeweled with lovely guttation droplets while growing, but they promptly evaporate with changes in temperature and humidity. I had to work quickly to capture this scene before conditions changed. I used my Mitty 10x microscope objective and combined 402 exposures to get the whole fruiting body in focus. The fruiting body was about 1mm tall, so this view is cropped quite a bit from full frame. Smell ya later!

FUN0432a.jpg

Guppy
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by Guppy »

Hi Tim

What a beautiful photo!
Excellent work!

Kurt

Beatsy
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by Beatsy »

Really interesting write-up and an excellent image. True dedication to the cause too :D

colohank
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by colohank »

Impressive effort and results!

Hank

dex110
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by dex110 »

So Beautiful and alien! Who said being a little stty sometimes is a bad thing? :P - amazing work!

Tim Boomer
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Location: Vacaville, California, USA
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by Tim Boomer »

Thank you all so very much for your kind words! =)

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by MarkSturtevant »

What a lovely picture! And I especially appreciate that you went after this subject with the specific goal of getting this very image. Well done!
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Hatchetj0e
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Location: Georgia, USA

Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by Hatchetj0e »

Great photo! I guess it means that you have to go looking in all the "right" places for subjects. I'll have to read about the Pilobolus sp. since the small blue bits on the top look very interesting.

mkbn
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by mkbn »

Lovely, Tim! I have actually been photographing Pilobolus this month and came upon your photos when google image searching, definitely stunning and I admired them!!! Unfortunately my macro rig is in upgrade progress, so I was only able to try some silly handheld stacks at 10x, aside from that I've been doing 4x stacks. I can't wait for more of my dung to fruit and to try some shots with the 10x mitty too :D

bobfriedman
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by bobfriedman »

Gorgeous image!.. well done indeed.

abpho
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by abpho »

Beautiful image. Makes me want to get back into photomacrography and not sell all my gear.
I'm in Canada! Isn't that weird?

peterkinchington
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Re: Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

Post by peterkinchington »

Lovely shot!
Try, try again. Fall down nine times get up ten.
www.peterkinchington.com

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