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Last weekend, I was trekking through nearby Crosslands Reserve when I noticed some fascinating carnivorous plants along the trail right near the start. And since I just *happened* to have my camera with me, I was well placed to spend a rather embarrassing amount of time trying to capture images of these remarkable plants.

The flowers are amazingly small, in most cases barely more than 5mm long. They have some kind of adhesive liquid drops at the tip of their small... uh... stamen-like appendages. An insect settles on the flower, gets stuck... and somehow gets digested.

From a photographic perspective, the biggest issue comes from the presence of even the slightest breeze, given how small and thin the plant is. Most of the photos below were shot at f2.8 and ISO1600 by necessity, to keep the shutter speeds up high enough. Here are some highlights:

Quite pretty, for a ruthless killer:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/61147501@N00/1090082285/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1321/1090082285_cbd1d7d50b.jpg" width="333" height="500" alt="zIMGP1808" /></a>

A pair of them, happily looking all Alien.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/61147501@N00/1090945658/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1050/1090945658_d19b5fedd9.jpg" width="335" height="500" alt="zIMGP1791" /></a>

Looks like a hovering craft of some kind:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/61147501@N00/1090083271/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1408/1090083271_3c0cf0af52.jpg" width="333" height="500" alt="zIMGP1811" /></a>

C&C highly appreciated!

The first one looks really cool!!

Ooh I do like that first one.... very nice....

first one is so beautiful!

Damn I forgot to comment when I first looked. The first 2 are great.

Berndt these are great. Good spot in the first place and you've done them justice. I must admit, I found myself wanting to look up inside them but I guess you would have had to have dug yourself a trench to do that while still leaving them in their natural positions.

Colours in the first two are just glorious.

Just love the first two, you really nailed them. Having just done some flower macros, you did great on these,

cheers,

André

You captured a sense of fragility. Beautiful! And bloody hard to do. Maybe should be a comp theme. Beautiful images.