During yet another recent visit to my local park I came upon a group of aloe(?) plants that was a surprise to me as I have not seen any other succulent plants in the park. I decided to get in close to showcase the repeating shapes and interesting detail.
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I did some healing brush/clone stamping to remove dirt and other distractions but left some of it be–did I do enough?
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Focus stacked (23 frames, although I probably did not need quite that many).
Oh how intriguing. The shapes and textures, those little spots and the concentric arrangement of the leaves all make for an eye-catcher. A scene so deep is a perfect one for stacking and in my experience it’s better to have too many images to work with than too few!
And you could have easily put this in Flora, just FYI.
Very intriguing! I love the spiral growth and the polka dots. The debris is realistic but not distracting.
The elongation of the lighter areas in the corners seems strange but I think it adds to the composition by creating lines that point toward the middle. I’m curious if that effect came from the focus stacking? Or possibly some sort of distortion to fill the frame?
Thank you, Kristen, David, and Diane. To answer Diane’s question about elongation of lighter areas, I went back and looked at all the RAW frames and they all look about the same, the only difference being the areas of focus. I was at 70 mm so I don’t think it is lens distortion. I also didn’t do any warping. Now you have me curious–I will have to revisit to confirm that the elongation is just how the plant developed.
I really like the colors and the textures Dean. The polka dots are mesmerizing. For such a chaotic scene you did well to compose this. I think this works well. When zoomed in it feel like I’m being attacked by a piranha with all those teeth/spikes.
This is outstanding, Dean. There’s a bit of a blacklight feeling from colors in the thorns and the spots that I’m thoroughly enjoying. Your framing is great.
