Macro i-phone long legged spider

Sea Mouse, Jellyfish & Crab...

I had never seen or heard about these sea creatures until I saw one at Portobello Beach yesterday and helped to free it from the seaweed it was tangled up in before letting it back in the sea again.

The sea mouse, Aphrodita aculeata is a marine polychaete worm found in the North Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean. The sea mouse normally lies buried head-first in the sand. It can live in muddy sea floors down to around 1000m.^[1]

Its body is covered in a dense mat of chaetae (hairs), from which the name "sea mouse" derives. Its scientific name is taken from Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love. This is because, when viewed ventrally, the sea mouse resembles a human female's genitalia. They may grow up to 20 cm and are active carnivores, chiefly eating other polychaetes, such as Nereis, which may be up to three times the length of the sea mouse.

The iridescent threads or setae that emerge from its scaled back are one of its unique features. Normally, these setae have a red sheen, warning off predators, but when the light shines on them perpendicularly, they flush green and blue. The setae are made of millions of submicroscopic crystals that reflect and filter the faint light of the ocean depths.

Jellyfish, well this one was just so beautiful and shiny ....

The crab.... well it had been some other creatures dinner, but the shell looked like a Venetian Mask I thought!

Pretty flowers....

Fresh, perfectly pretty rose petals, a moments calm from the start of the Edinburgh Festival and the month of no stop shows, fireworks, theatre, music, comedy, art, market stalls.....

Macro i-phone purple blue thistles

I really liked the colours of these thistles I saw at the beach and thought that they jumped out agains all the things they were planted around.

Having gotten home, downloaded all my i-phone photographs and then looked at them I was even more pleased with them then I thought I would be - even if I do say so myself!!!

Whilst it was actually the colour of the flowers that attracted me, clearly they were attracting bees too and I find they are actually not at all i-phone shy - maybe they go to bee modelling classes!

Even this last photo, the bee and flower are not the main focus, it is actually the shells below which are really pretty ground cover, especially being on the sea front.

Imma Bee

My i-phone capture!

Happiness

Doesn't this sunflower look as though it is giggling (maybe it was laughing because it knew we had a great weekend). Maybe it is giggling as it is hiding something..... something really pretty that is tickling it....

A bumble bee all covered in pollen, legs, back the lot.....

The pollen is speckled all over the fur on its back, clearly he is a busy little bee as the photo above is the one I took when it had buzzed off to another nearby flower.

I just love the photo I took of the sunflower - it makes me smile and is just how I think sunflowers should look.

And here is a short video of it, all photos and videos taken from my i-phone, yep my i-phone I love it so much and not just for the reason it was intended!!

Lastly, this video also makes me smile.....

i-phone close up

I don't have a macro lens, but I do have a wonderful i-phone which I take all my photos on!

Butterfly Macro Photography on my iphone!

Every photograph I have taken on this blog has been on my i-phone I love it! Because I have the phone on me everywhere I go, it is just so easy for me to use it as it is nearly always to hand!

Now, I have marvelled at my friend Laura's blog as she has taken some fantastic shots using her macro lens which she has become very attached to and understandably so, which has made me wonder whether to start using a "proper camera" where I can get attachments that do so many other things. I used to take photographs years ago and just stopped doing it because as much as I loved taking them, it was something that I felt I need to consciously go out and do, and so this hobby just ended up fading away. That was until I got my i-phone, and now I am obsessed!!!

So as already mentioned, I have marvelled at the close up shots Laura has taken using her macro lens and also other bloggers whom I have started to follow or just look in on never thinking that I too could capture these types of shots with my mobile phone! Until now! I am genuinely gobsmacked by the results that I have gotten from my humble wee i-phone of these close up out in the wild butterfly (I was not at a butterfly farm)!

And so my session with the butterfly ended when it flew away - but my memory of it has not - yey! I know they would have been a lot better using a "proper camera" with macro lens, but my goodness look at what I got from my i-phone - hooray for Apple!

I am just so excited, my i-phone can capture amazing close ups too - who would have thought!

So although I unfortunately didn't win the lovely butterfly necklace that was up for grabs at Leigh vs Laundry, I did get to capture them with my i-phone (and the bees if you are interested in looking at the post I did after this one). All must be ok up in heaven!