[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part L

Still have a lot of these photos stockpiled from . . . I don't even know how many years ago. Long time. I should probably try harder to burn through those, 'cause I'm still taking new pictures, and at this rate I'll never actually end up posting them.

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Tetrastigma voinieriana. Alas, my Tetrastigma was lost in the big scale purge in February. It didn't have scale: I just got tired of it. It was top-heavy, and I couldn't actually let it climb anything like it wanted to, because I wouldn't have been able to take it to the tub to water it, and it had never grown very well, so out it went. I can't say I miss it much, though it's not particularly a bad plant, just not well-suited to my growing situation here.

Platanus occidentalis, autumn. I think sycamores are my favorite outdoor trees. Though tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) is competitive. This particular photo does a terrible job of showing why it's my favorite tree, but that's not really what I was trying to do in the first place so whatever.

Strelitzia nicolai.

Fothergilla x 'Mount Airy.' This was obviously taken at the ex-job; we don't have a Fothergilla here.

Ligularia stenocephala 'The Rocket.' Same here, though I have run into Ligularias occasionally in houseplant books, and have always wondered how well they'd really grow indoors.

The only time I've ever seen anyone come close to trying is when we kept one in the greenhouse at work for a while; it produced some flower buds, which was exciting, but then the actual flowers turned out to have thrips, so they were all twisted and stunted and gross. The whole affair was pretty disappointing.

Plectranthus amboinicus, variegated. I'd like P. amboinicus better as a houseplant if it didn't try to get so big so fast.

Dieffenbachia 'Starbright.' One of the four or five Dieffenbachias I still own. Most of them get thrown out once they get too tall and leggy for me to deal with: either I decide I don't like them and just throw them directly out, or I'm emotionally conflicted about throwing them out, so I try to cut them back and root the cutting, but they don't resprout and the cutting doesn't root and so then I throw them out.

I've always loved the way Dieffenbachias look, and obviously they make for great transmitted light pictures, and it doesn't hurt that they're kind of dangerous -- I like the dangerous plants -- but overall? I don't find them worth growing. The exceptions are the really huge cultivars like 'Tropic Snow' and 'Tropic Rain,' which do well enough for me, and resprout consistently when cut back, that I don't mind having them around.

Pilea 'Moon Valley.' I don't know how many times I had to attempt a photo of 'Moon Valley' before I got this one, but it was a lot. So this is probably my favorite from this batch, whether or not it deserves to be.

Aglaonema 'Sparkling Sarah.' My original plant, which had three individual plants in it and looked decently full, is not as attractive as it used to be, though that's my fault, not the plant's -- I accidentally broke one of the canes off. It's still one of the better red/pink Aglaonemas in my experience.

Caladium 'Fire Chief.' Not a houseplant (though don't think I haven't tried, more than once), but the photos are almost always great.

Walkaways Part 18

None of these are quite as unusual as the Tillandsia dyeriana, but I thought they were interesting.

Anthurium 'Sensa.'

(close-up of flowers: new on left, old on right)
Anthurium 'Sensa' is the one I most wanted to buy, which makes little sense, really, since I already have a lot of Anthuriums, including a couple with similar spathe colors. I just have a hard time resisting Anthuriums, I think is the deal. It's still a nice color, though, and Anthuriums are particularly tempting to me now because I'm trying to cross mine and start seedlings, so I see a plant with a newly-emerged flower and all I can think about is all the pollen it's going to be producing, and how desperately I must have said pollen.

Sedum indicum var. yunnanense, crested form
Plant List says that the actual name is Sinocrassula yunnanensis. This didn't do a lot for me, though I suppose I can see how someone might find it interesting. From the internet, I see the main use of S. yunnanensis is as a rock garden plant (they're hardy to zone 7, googlegedly), but I ran into a few pictures of them in containers. They apparently never do much more than this, forming little clumps of rosettes.

Dieffenbachia 'Delilah.'
This picture didn't turn out anywhere near as well as I'd hoped it would. (There's a better one here.)

I probably shouldn't try to grow Dieffenbachias. It's not that I can't: with a few exceptions ('Camouflage,' 'Sterling'), they grow fine for me, as long as I keep them out of direct sun and warm, dry air.

Instead, the problem is that after growing well for a while, they'll reach the point where they're too tall and leggy to fit in their spot, or they're always threatening to fall over, or they just don't look good anymore, and then I have to decide what to do with them. I don't have the patience (or experience) for air-layering, so I've always just cut them back and tried to root the tops. Occasionally this has worked, but usually it doesn't. And the stumps are supposed to resprout: occasionally that has worked, but usually it doesn't. (Some varieties seem to be better about rooting and resprouting than others: 'Tropic Snow' does well, as does a NOID that resembles 'Triumph.') So 'Delilah' is appealing, but I think I'm going to have to wait on getting more dieffs until I've figured out how to air-layer them.

Adromischus maculatus.
I had a bad experience with a plant I think was an Adromischus, a few years ago when the plant obsession was just starting up. It stayed alive, but the new growth was weak and pale and it was obviously not getting enough light, so I gave up on it after about five months. I could probably do better now, because although I don't have southern exposure, I do have artificial lights. Perhaps someday.

Guzmania NOID.

Same plant, from top.
Finally, a Guzmania coloration I haven't seen before, and think is really pretty. No ID tag, though. Of course.

The good news is that Guzmanias are pretty easy to keep alive. The bad news is that their strong will to live means I don't treat mine particularly well, so they're not very big and they've never rebloomed. (I know about the apple trick. I just don't think my plants are strong enough to bloom, so I haven't pushed.) This is a fascinating (to me) variety, though: I really like the white/black/orange combination.

How to Take Transmitted Light Photographs

This one is for Derek Powazek, who left a comment in the most recent transmitted-light post asking for a "'behind the scenes' type post on how you shoot these photos."

Initially I resisted the idea, because I didn't think it was really complicated enough to write a post about. I mean, really, you just get a light source, a camera, and a leaf, and you put the leaf between the light source and camera and take pictures. Nothing that complicated about it. But as I thought have I learned anything else about the process that would be useful to share?, I managed to make it complicated anyway. Yay me.

So the first thing is, you need a camera, light source, and leaf.

I have no advice about the camera part. I don't know about cameras; I've only ever had relatively cheap point-and-shoot ones. I do know you're going to need something with a very short focal length, so make sure there's a macro mode.

I have some advice about leaves. Characteristics that tend to make leaves suitable for transmitted light photos:

1. Thin (non-succulent).
2. Broad.
3. Variegated.
4. Flat(-tish).

Thick, succulent leaves can sometimes produce serviceable photos, but to see the venation, you need a leaf that's thin enough for light to shine through. Broad leaves are useful mostly because the leaf has to be big enough to block the light source from shining on the lens. If it's not, you get lens flare.

Lens flare, ruining an otherwise mediocre picture of Begonia x erythrophylla.
Variegated leaves tend to be more interesting, or at least more colorful and dramatic, though that's a matter of personal taste. Finally, extremely curly, quilted, or twisted leaves tend to make poor subjects because only part of them can be in focus. Sometimes that works out well anyway, but I prefer flatter leaves.

The "leaves" don't always have to be leaves, either -- I've taken serviceable pictures of spathes (Spathiphyllum, Anthurium), phyllocladodes (Schlumbergera), petals/sepals (Abutilon, Tulipa, Hemerocallis), and cataphylls (Zamioculcas) before. Dead leaves also have their charms, sometimes, in the right situations.

Zamioculcas zamiifolia cataphyll. I'm not saying it's gorgeous or anything, but it's in-focus, and there's light.
Almost any leaf can be made to work, but I particularly recommend Dieffenbachia, Caladium, Alpinia/Zingiber, Calathea, Alocasia, Zantedeschia, Strelitzia (especially S. reginae), Solenostemon, Musa, Anthurium, Codiaeum, Begonia, and Phlebodium.

The light source that works best for me is sunlight. That said, it's totally possible to get a decent image out of an artificial light; the main problem is that the color balance can come out really strange, and sometimes it can be hard to fix after the fact, like in this picture:

Aglaonema 'Golden Bay,' using an overly-reddish fluorescent light as a light source. The result is too yellow and too saturated: I should have fiddled with the image longer, probably.
This happens less often with sun.

One wants to minimize reflected light as much as possible when doing this. The appeal of transmitted light photos is that the colors are highly saturated and at high contrast; if there's light coming from behind the camera, this will reflect back into the lens and wash out the color. This can also be a problem if you're taking pictures outside in a bright area, or even if you're taking pictures while wearing light-colored clothing. Wear dark clothes, and as much as possible, shoot from a dark location towards a light one.

Strobilanthes dyerianus showing reflected light (especially visible on the left side of the image and down the midvein). Reflected light tends to be blue, so sometimes you can just reduce the level of blue a little bit and come up with something workable anyway.
Very light-colored leaves (e.g. some of the Dieffenbachias with white centers, Spathiphyllum spathes, pretty much any of the chartreuse cultivars of anything) tend to be difficult to get. This might be specific to my camera. It's often possible to manipulate the image afterward to increase the contrast and get something interesting out of it anyway, but not always.

Dieffenbachia 'Triumph' or something similar. This would have been improved by making the image lighter and increasing the contrast, though sometimes that also changes the color.

Like here (Spathiphyllum 'Golden Glow' or whatever, spathe), for example. The actual spathe is basically pure white, but in the process of cranking up the contrast so there was something to look at, all this yellowish stuff showed up. This was fixable too (reduce the saturation); I don't know why I didn't.
I usually get the best results when the light source is hitting the leaf exactly perpendicular to the leaf surface. If the light comes in at an angle to the leaf, you'll wind up with shadows everywhere. If the leaf is basically flat, this can sometimes be a good effect; if it's at all cupped, quilted, or otherwise uneven, though, I don't like it as well. With some extremely-textured leaves (like Pilea mollis 'Moon Valley,'), you're going to get shadows no matter what you do.

Pilea mollis 'Moon Valley.' There's a really obvious shadow in the top left, but there are also shadows on the left side of each of the bumps on the leaf.
If the camera is pointed at an angle to a flat leaf, you'll have one area that's in focus, and then out-of-focus everywhere else. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Usually, the closer you can get to aiming the camera perpendicular to the leaf surface, the better.

Codiaeum variegatum NOID. This image was very obviously taken from an angle -- the left and right sides are very blurry.
I'm usually trying to get these pictures while holding the leaf in one hand and the camera in the other. This means that for most shots, both my hands are moving, and the image comes out blurred. The solutions I've come up with for this:

1. Keep your hands touching one another, so that if one moves, the other has to move with it. This doesn't eliminate motion blur, but it keeps both hands moving in the same direction, so you get rid of some of it.
2. Tape the leaf to something. I've had decent luck taping leaves to the shade of the fluorescent light on Nina's terrarium; I've also been able to tape leaves to windows at certain times of day. If you use a tiny piece of tape, and only on the very edges of the leaf (which won't show in the picture anyway), this can be very helpful. This doesn't work when there's a screen on the window, though:

Dieffenbachia 'Camouflage,' photographed against a screened window. It's an interesting effect, but not really the kind of thing I'm usually going for.
3. Find a tripod. I often stack up soup cans and rest the camera on the cans when taking pictures. This doesn't reduce camera motion entirely, but it helps, and it's easy to set up, take down, and adjust. Plus then you can have soup when you're finished taking pictures.
4. Take lots of pictures. Sometimes you just have to take 25 pictures and hope that one of them turns out.

Manipulating the images afterward is also part of the gig; I use Irfanview. I rotate the image so that the base and petiole of the leaf are on the left and the tip of the leaf is on the right, straighten it as much as possible so the midrib (if present) is strictly horizontal, crop the image, and then adjust the color until it looks right. All these steps are pretty easy to do in Irfanview, though cropping is sometimes kind of a pain, because of a quirk that happens when the image size is reduced down to about 20-25% of normal. A typical process goes something like this (using a bract from an unidentified Euphorbia pulcherrima variety as my example):

This is the raw image, as uploaded from my camera. (Part of the reason this is so dark is because it was late in the day and I didn't have much direct light to work with; this was taken in the ex-job's greenhouse, about an hour before sunset.)

After rotating it slightly to get the midvein horizontal.

Cropped to remove the shadow of another bract on the left.

Lightened with the "gamma correction" function. (I don't know what gamma is or why it needs correcting, but this gives better results than adjusting the brightness.)

I increased the contrast until it looked more or less right.

I used the auto-adjust color, which increased the contrast a little more and darkened the image slightly.
There are often other steps involved in the photo processing: if everything's too yellow, I can turn up the blue a little; if it's washed-out, I can increase contrast; if it's a little fuzzy, I can sharpen the image. That sort of thing. Often, something that looks just fine on my computer will look like crap once I upload it to the blog, but them's the breaks.

So I think that's all I've got. Go. Go try it for yourself.

Rumble Among the Jungle, Matches 2.29-2.32

Rules and Stuff
1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.
2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.
3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.
4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.
5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.¹
6) All polls will be open for three days.

Match 2.13 to 2.16 results:

No huge surprises here. This set was 3/4 about pretty and colorful plants advancing past plants that are less pretty and colorful. In 2.13, Platycerium spp. beat Gynura aurantiaca 77 to 42, probably because when it comes right down to it, Gynura is just not a very popular plant. (It only made it into the second round because it was paired with Hypoestes phyllostachya, which people really hate, in the first.)
I'd worried about 2.14, but Schlumbergera cvv. did defeat Aloe vera like I'd hoped, and by a wider margin than I expected. The score was 78-46.

So Platycerium spp. goes against Schlumbergera cvv. in match 3.7; voting begins 18 October.

Cordyline fruticosa cvv. advances to the third round past Pachira aquatica, in match 2.15. It wasn't even close: 76 to 34.
Finally, in match 2.16, Hibiscus rosa-sinensis clobbered Mimosa pudica (sorry, Liza), 86 to 30.

On 18 October, Cordyline fruticosa cvv. will battle Hibiscus rosa-sinensis for a ticket to round 4.

And now, today's end-of-the-second-round matches.

Match 2.29
Aeonium spp. vs. Euphorbia milii (crown of thorns)

Clockwise from top: Aeonium 'Kiwi,' 'Irish Bouquet,' A. arboreum atropurpureum 'Zwartkop.'

(All Euphorbia milii cvv.)





Match 2.30
Tillandsia spp. (air plants) vs. Dieffenbachia cvv. (dumb cane)

Left side, top to bottom: Tillandsia xerographica, T. capitata 'Peach.'
Center, top to bottom: NOID, NOID, T. ionantha 'Druid.'
Right side, top to bottom: NOID, T. abdita Mexican form.

Clockwise from top left: Dieffenbachia 'Sterling,' 'Panther,' 'Camille' or 'Tropic Marianne' or something similar, 'Camouflage,' NOID.





Match 2.31
Hippeastrum cvv. (amaryllis) vs. Agave spp.

L-R: Hippeastrum NOID, Hippeastrum NOID (probably 'Apple Blossom?'), Hippeastrum NOID.
Left picture donated by Tigerdawn. Right picture is from Arpingstone, via Wikimedia Commons.

Clockwise from top left: Agave victoriae-reginae, A. americana medio-picta alba, NOID (maybe A. desmettiana?), A. marmorata.





Match 2.32
Opuntia spp./cvv. (prickly pear cactus) vs. Calathea spp./cvv.

Various unidentified Opuntia spp.; the top left and bottom right plants might be O. microdasys. Center bottom plant might be too, but a different variety.

Clockwise from top left: Calathea ornata, C. roseo-picta 'Medallion' (?), C. makoyana, C. insignis, C. zebrina.





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¹ I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part XLIV

A lot of things aren't working properly for me at the moment (oddities with loading certain websites, a literal headache, a bureaucratic thing which prompted an unscheduled trip to Iowa City yesterday -- and no, Mercury is not in retrograde), so tasks like e-mail and plant-watering are piling up, necessitating a transmitted light post.

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Pilea cadierei. Quite a bit duller than you'd expect from seeing the leaves by reflected light, but sort of quietly interesting. To me, anyway.

Curcurbita sp. (C. pepo?), petals. Many of these photos are very old: I've been taking pictures faster than I've been using them. I think this is from fall 2009.

Pandanus veitchii.

Polyscias balfouriana. This isn't the greatest picture, but P. balfouriana tends to have veins that are particularly good for photographing.

Quercus sp., autumn. I can't decide whether the tears and brown spots improve transmitted light photos of deciduous trees like Quercus (oak) and Acer (maple) or ruin them.

Iresine herbstii 'Blazin' Rose.'

Weigela sp. I really like this kind of leaf. Not particularly taken with the plant (one came with the house: it isn't causing any problems, and it's impressively large, but it doesn't do much for me either. Considering how difficult it is to get enough light in the house, I'd really sort of prefer that we not have anything tall in or near the house at all. But it's probably staying anyway.

Hypoestes phyllostachya, white cv.

Dieffenbachia NOID. I keep seeing this variety over and over, but I have no idea what it's called. My best guess is 'Golden Sunset,' but given how many varieties there are, and how variable the leaves may be, a lot of them sort of shade into one another, and it's hard to be very sure.

Musa 'Zebrina Rojo.' (possibly Ensete 'Zebrina Rojo.') Sort of the obvious favorite from the set.