who needs AI to mess with your brain

It's true that artificial intelligence can create some scary scenes that make you wonder whether what you are seeing is actually true or not.  But my image this week was not created by any form of false or artificial means.  Oh no, it's a straightforward image; but what of?

Is it an aerial shot from a balloon or helicopter ride maybe?

Or is it simply something far more mundane and, well, down to earth...

It is, of course, the latter.  I was actually taking, or rather trying to take, a picture of an insect on some echinacea flowers when I spotted the moss or algae growing on its side.  I figured it would make for an interesting image and so set about photographing it with my Fujifilm X-H2 and TTArtisans 100mm f2.8 ultra-macro lens.

I shot nine focus-bracketed images at f5.6, ISO 125 and a shutter of around 1/15th of a second. The resulting images were then stacked in Helicon Focus to give this "questionable" image you see above.