And for comparison, a focus stack, with a slight vignette and also a little edge blur. I touched out the small leaf bit right at the top edge. The original was in softer light as bits of fog were drifting around.
While Tony was shooting the grand landscape and Lon was having trouble keeping his camera still, I was looking for little treasures – and found one! I did a focus stack but kinda liked this first instinctive shot the best. Wishing now I had removed the dying leaf pointing to the left.
Specific Feedback Requested
All comments welcome!
Technical Details
Very slight crop from right. Minimal tonal tweaks in LR. This is the exported raw file. No shenanigans.
What would life be without shenanigans…middle grey?
This is lovely with the colour contrast. I am a sucker for images of plant decay, but it seems that is not universal, and bright, fresh, sharp are just the cats whiskers instead.
I also peronally like OOF areas in closeup and macro images…just as well because I have this negative thing about tripods.
Anyway, the only things I can add are that it may look good with a slightly darkened vignette around the edges and maybe a slight darkening of the sand.
Like a luscious fruit mirage in the desert (probably poisonous!). No problem with that dying leaf as it leads into lots of more decayed ones, and there’s already a nice untidy lack of symmetry here so no need for stacking imo. As Phil said, the colour contrast is the killer here.
At first I thought you’d dropped some rusty bananas! Ice plant…weird. Is there any ice there in a northern California shoreline? The colors and texture contrasts are a treat. Yeah, it might be nice to have all of the living part of the plant crisp, but I like the OOF areas in the dead leaves. The one pointing left isn’t glaring to me.
Hey, this looks vaguely familiar. Wait! now I remember - I saw this thru your viewfinder! Or was it the live view or playback? But I remember you capturing this!
I really like how the ice plant is surrounded by the decaying and spent plant. this tells a great nature story. The ice plant is rendered just exactly as I remembered it! Great eye on this one!
The only suggestion I have - and I’m not sure this is a correction, or an alternate choice… but I was thinking about adding a good vignette to at least burn down the outer edges. As presented it’s almost like a reverse vignette. Minor thought.
I really like the contrast between the decayed vegetation and the beautifully colored leaves in the middle. Obviously with these shots getting the depth of field to look right is a real challenge but I think given the circumstances you did a nice job and it feels fairly even.
Thanks @Phil_G, @Mike_Friel, @Kris_Smith, @Lon_Overacker and @DvirBarkay! I was surprised I got this much (apparent) DOF and I was quite close to the plant, which was only a few inches across. I like Phil’s idea of a vignette and have posted a second version above. Just for comparison, it is a focus stack, probably with the tripod moved an inch or two.
