Robert Watcher
Well-known member
This morning I headed out at 5:300AM to drive around the country to see what I could photograph as the sun rose.
On the way home after getting some landscape images captured - I turned down a beaten up little road to take a shot of some vultures. In this ditch were these amazingly intricate structures on top of what looked to be some type of thistle. And so I turned my camera that way.
After photographing the first setting to show the amazing details in the one head (last image in this set) - - - I came across what looked like matched sets and so photographed those with the focus at different points with each capture.
This first photograph is actually 4 different frames where there was a combination of wide open lens (300mm equivalent from about 6 feet away) with focus on the front set and then the back set of flowers, which were probably 8 inches behind.
When I viewed the area where I took the second image - I came across a visual pattern of the 2 similar smaller flowers stacked on top of each other and the 2 larger flowers mirroring each other on each side. I decided to just use the front flower (I'll call it that anyway) as a focus point and the rest fall off (again they were about 6 to 8 inches behind). I moved the tripod meticulously up and down and sideways to get the viewpoint that was most appealing.
The last image - which I took first - is a combination of 2 different shots taken from the same position. One caught the back edges of the flower and the stalk in perfect focus but the front tips of the flowers were soft - and the other was focused right on the front edges and the back edges fell off in focus because of the close shooting distance and long lens - - - so I just masked out everything in the one shot so that just the front tips layed over top of the the shot with the back edges sharp - - - for a flower fully sharp from front to back.
Taken with Olympus E-PL3 and 40-150 lens (80mm to 300mm equivalent)
Rob
On the way home after getting some landscape images captured - I turned down a beaten up little road to take a shot of some vultures. In this ditch were these amazingly intricate structures on top of what looked to be some type of thistle. And so I turned my camera that way.
After photographing the first setting to show the amazing details in the one head (last image in this set) - - - I came across what looked like matched sets and so photographed those with the focus at different points with each capture.
This first photograph is actually 4 different frames where there was a combination of wide open lens (300mm equivalent from about 6 feet away) with focus on the front set and then the back set of flowers, which were probably 8 inches behind.
When I viewed the area where I took the second image - I came across a visual pattern of the 2 similar smaller flowers stacked on top of each other and the 2 larger flowers mirroring each other on each side. I decided to just use the front flower (I'll call it that anyway) as a focus point and the rest fall off (again they were about 6 to 8 inches behind). I moved the tripod meticulously up and down and sideways to get the viewpoint that was most appealing.
The last image - which I took first - is a combination of 2 different shots taken from the same position. One caught the back edges of the flower and the stalk in perfect focus but the front tips of the flowers were soft - and the other was focused right on the front edges and the back edges fell off in focus because of the close shooting distance and long lens - - - so I just masked out everything in the one shot so that just the front tips layed over top of the the shot with the back edges sharp - - - for a flower fully sharp from front to back.
Taken with Olympus E-PL3 and 40-150 lens (80mm to 300mm equivalent)
Rob
