by tibouchina redux
It has been a long while since I have been doing any macro photography. As I was caring for my tibouchina plant on the deck, I felt inspired to fetch the camera to capture the unusual details of the shattered blossoms. Why “redux”? Please view my 2010 photos of the same plant.
August 26, 2013 in Nature, Photoworks by Marja-Leena
A fascinating specimen, so long as it stays that size and the imagination doesn’t get overly exercised. I must just be having one of those days. Lovely photography though.
Tom, isn’t it amazing when you look closer and enbiggen what you see, that it can be so different and maybe even scary. I imagine this is what a bee or butterfly might see. Glad you like my camera work.
So beautiful close-up. Especially the colours.
Anil, thank you! So great to have you visit – it’s been a while.
Marja-Leena!
Been kinda long gone for awhile. But this is a great flower. It looks like some Finnish swamp meat eating plant, which swallows anything smaller than little bird or a frog. They’re called kihokki. Some gardeners have tried to make them to grow as inside plant, but they wilt.
Close-up photo gives such fine blossoms.
But I had to come to tell you news: Vaasa Taidehalli got one more year time for now. Obviously there is a longer standing plan to end it.
The closer you look the more beautiful monsters are to be seen.
Extraordinary plant! I’ve never heard of tibouchina. The top photo looks like some kind of hairy bird, beak open to swallow the purple thing. Nature is so imaginative – no artist has ever invented anything half as original as the thousands of natural forms the earth is filled with.
Your pictures are often revelations!
Ripsa, I know you have been ‘away’ due to your accident so you are forgiven :-).
I had to look up kihokki which means Drosera, commonly known as the sundews. Fascinating, I didn’t know Finnish swamps have these. The tibouchina is not a meat eater at all, though I can see the closeups making it appear so.
I’m glad to hear Vaasa’s Taidehalli is reprieved for a while. Perhaps another solution will come to save it for it is too sad that this large and lovely space should close just to save a few thousand euros in the city’s budget.
For readers wondering what we’re talking about:
I had an exhibition with two other Canadian artist friends in Pohjanmaan Museum’s Taidehalli in Vaasa in 2002. If interested, read about it here and also visit the special site TRACES which was made for it. Ripsa lives in Vaasa though we’ve never met except much later as blog friends.
Joe, beautiful monsters sound rather contradictory but when we see things out of context, our imaginations do like to take over!
Natalie, oh, I’m glad you find these photos a revelation! it is a lovely plant which I’ve had for some years. It’s frost tender here so it’s kept in a pot and brought indoors into the solarium for winter. Have a look at these images for the whole plant (mine isn’t at all that large and bushy). These closeup photos give quite a different impression, don’t they!?
That first image is especially spectacular. Your macro images are always so instructive of nature’s deep complexity.
Susan, thanks. Looking through macro lens opens another truly amazing world sometimes, almost like looking through a microscope. I need to do it more often, as I used to.
Love the swoopy dragon in the first photo…
Marly, birds, beautiful monsters and a dragon – we humans do have a wonderful imagination!