Horse Conch

[Steve Maxson]

One from the archives - and perhaps stretching the limits of "Macro" a bit. The Horse Conch is the "State Shell" of Florida and can grow to over a foot in length. When small, their shells are bright orange in color, but this color fades as they age - and their shell becomes covered with barnacles and other small marine life. These are predators and feed on other marine gastropods including whelks, tulips, and other conchs. Their interior soft parts are bright orange. This one was stranded at low tide on a cold (for Florida) 50 degree (F) morning. Perhaps the cold temps had something to do with its interior parts sort of flopping out on the beach as they normally would be mostly pulled back into the shell when the conch is out of the water like this. Canon 10D, 90 mm tilt/shift, 1/8 sec, f/16, ISO 200, tripod, mirror lock, cable release. All comments are welcome and appreciated.

[MiroslavMaric]

Hi Steve. The shell is well placed in the frame and the red/orange color is well balanced with color of BG. Deep DOF is ok, I like the details in BG. Well done capture. Thank you for an interesting description.

Cheers,
Miro

[Jonathan Ashton]

It's a fine image Steve nicely constructed, I like the colours. Nothing to dislike at all, I don't know if it is just me but as soon as I saw it I thought great image but not displaying so much detail as some of the others then I noticed it was a 10D camera, maybe I am subconsciously trying to make the image fit what I am thinking - maybe? That said I like the image very much indeed.

[Norm Dulak]

Nice image Steve, beautifully captured and presented. It takes me back to many days spent on the beaches of Sanibel Island.

[Nancy Bell]

I appreciate your background information with this! Nicely placed in the frame with the wave lines on the sand echoing the vertical element of the shell. It seems a bit like a "fish out of water" to see the so must of the actual creature on the sand. But that orange is certainly striking.