Dung Cannon (Pilobolus sp.)

[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!

[Guppy]

Hi Tim

What a beautiful photo!
Excellent work!

Kurt

[Beatsy]

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

[colohank]

Impressive effort and results!

Hank

[dex110]

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

[Tim Boomer]

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

[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!

[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]

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

[bobfriedman]

Gorgeous image!.. well done indeed.

[abpho]

Beautiful image. Makes me want to get back into photomacrography and not sell all my gear.

[peterkinchington]

Lovely shot!

[keithostertag]

Wow! What a beauty! Very inspiring for me as a photographer and would-be artist. Thanks for showing it to us!

Keith

[inekepineke]

Wauuw!! Stunning!!! what a beautyfull pitcher
only it stinks a little bit ha haa
greetings Thomas from Holland.

[dmillard]

What a wonderful image! René Lalique would have been jealous.