Beyond sleek

Click for greater clarity.

Last month, in a post entitled Sleek, you saw the relatively straight and distinctly shiny strands that female Clematis drummondii flowers produce after they’re fertilized. Now, in a photograph that I took in my neighborhood on July 18, you get to see the tangled mass that those strands, still somewhat lustrous, turn into. The red area at the center of the picture is a seed core, with each strand attached to one seed.

The width of this photograph represents about an inch and a quarter (3.2 cm). Because I had to get in so close, and because the strands were at varying distances from the front of my macro lens, I stopped down to the minimum aperture of f/32 for the greatest possible depth of field. To compensate for the loss of light at such a small aperture, I turned on the camera’s flash. The dark navy blue visible between strands was actually clear sky.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman