Gazania - how she "does it"

[kds315*]

Already last year I showed some images of a south african Gazania flower. I was wondering how she attracts insects, so I used my bee / butterfly vision filter and took some shots. Here the results.

White light shot:


Butterfly vision (simulated) shot (UV=blue)


The pollen lights up strongly around the flower petals in the central part and they have a quite strong UV reflectance also.

What is shown in the second shot is not just UV, it is actually UV, Blue, Green, Red, where UV is mapped into the Blue channel. (That works with flowers only which have no or hardly any blue content like this one). I call this "simulated butterfly vision" or "BV" for short, since a butterfly has tetrachromatic vision (UV, Blue, Green, Red). This is basically the (proprietary) filtering technique I have developed for the cooperation on that "Invisible Wolds" project with BBC London.

[Attila]

Wow! So stunning second one ! Amazing how pollen lighting up!

[Orio]

Amazing, it looks like an otherworldly alien base!

[kds315*]

Yep, I was astonished myself!

[Minolfan]

Heavy kind of spotlight for the bees - they will need sunglasses!?
Surprising picture!

[LucisPictor]

Wow! That is impressive indeed!

[Esox lucius]

I am slowly realizing where the German artist Michael Böhme gets his inspiration from. The center of the flower reminds me of space science fiction architecture, just like Orio mentioned!

[patrickh]

If I were a bee I would head over there for sure. Lovely


patrickh

[kds315*]

Thanks guys, appreciate it!

[Himself]

Impressive picture!
How about aa picture of a human ( I didn't say man) seen by the bees?

[Orio]