lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Here are 6 more for a total of 12 for today of my many nicer and more photographically interesting Cowrie seashells. These are all as Mother Nature presented them. Note a lot of smooth shiny shells like this often look soft in photographs because the pigments are below the surface of the shell the the light refracts and disperses. Reflects too are nearly impossible to avoid. In addition to the Arabian Cowrie shared last time that looks like it has mysterious writing on it I am also posting a second specimen of a Map Cowrie that also looks a bit like has writing on it. These were taken 9-14-2023 with my Pentax K-1 mark II DSLR and smc Pentax-D FA F2.8 50mm Macro Lens. All images were taken Manual Focus and Manual Exposure of ISO 200, f/16, 3 s on a Gitzo Tripod. I only own one or a few specimens of any species. Let me know what you think. Enjoy.

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Lynx Cowrie

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Lynx Cowrie (second larger specimen)

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Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

More nice ones!! We always called #5 a Flamingo tongue.

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

Beautiful work, Mike (shells and photos)!

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Yes, that is one of its Common Names. I also posted all 12 of these photos to The San Diego Shell Club and they prefer the official Scientific Latin names. Right down to current changes in taxonomy and sometimes to subspecies! It is all a lot of work already so I don't want to be creating different versions of my image files for the San Diego Shell Club, FaceBook/X, and the UHH. Appreciate your feedback and viewing any photos I post.

NMGal Loc: NE NM

Certainly a great variety.

joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

Superbly presented beauties 💯💯🔥💯💯

tcthome Loc: NJ

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

srg

These could benefit greatly from focus stacking.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Cowries usually look like that, the design and pigments are under the surface so the light gets refracted and dispersed. If you zoom in you can see that the fine surface cracks and reflections are sharp. As noted I manually focused about halfway in to the shells at f/16. Also many of the designs have diffuse or soft edges. The Pseudozonaria annettae is small only 46 x 24 x 20 mm; 20mm deep and a 5.5x enlargement as presented. To get the pure black background I used Ps to paint out the original black cloth that I didn't like and was unevenly lite. Thus the original sharp or soft shell margins are gone. I have shot focus stacks of tiny shells in the past but I does not do much for them that shooting a single shot at f/16 or f/22 can't do. I more often focus stack larger shells at f/5.6 or f/8. That can work well and look beautiful. With my new camera I could do Focus Shifting and create a "created" 144MP image. Thank you for looking and commenting.

Note these images for reference. Margins are sharp shiny pigmented area are more diffuse.

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joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

Spectacularly beautiful 🏆💯🏆💯🏆

srg

ok. Thanks for the explanation

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Yes, Seashells are amazing and complex. Also many (smooth shiny ones) look "soft" to the naked human eye. Oh, a correction. I meant "Pixel Shift". Doing and thinking so many things at once, Photography, Biology, Photoshop, Typing, Spelling. I get confused and make mistakes.