Compared to New Hampshire, leaves don’t stay on the trees nearly as long when they change color so I try to be creative in extending my fall photography before the snow flies. Sometimes there’s a long period of ‘stick season’ as there is this year. That means the sere leaf takes precedence.
The bigger basswood leaves in the yard reminded me of Edward Weston’s iconic cabbage leaf shot and while this is in no way that good, I loved the sinuous folds and waves. The frost was a bonus!
This is a 21-image stack. In the past it would have been impossible to get anywhere near this level of DOF and I would have settled for a knife-edge or similar limited area of crisp focus. I can still do that with one or more of the images I used for this final one, but I liked the front-to-back sharpness and so…
Specific Feedback Requested
How does the stack look? I went over and over it in Zerene during the retouching, but maybe I missed something. Also, I realize now that I should have closed down a bit so I wouldn’t have had to take so many shots, but better too many than short.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Tripod
Focus bracketing using the 0+ method, 4-step
Lr for a crop & initial adjustments to white & black points, texture, clarity, sharpening etc. Then Zerene for the stack and retouching. Lr again for more finesse including some dodging and burning to contour the shadows. Photoshop to use Content Aware Fill to remove a couple of holes in the leaf that were eye magnets.
"but I liked the front-to-back sharpness " and I like it too! You have more patience than I but love that you too see these sorts of images. I think the extra work you put in makes for a wonderful photo whereas without it it would have been OK but not full of wonder
I love the soft light, fading to cooler toward the top and left, and the detail in the stack! Including the “start of the leaf” in the LR was excellent!
The occasional frost we get here has always caused me to waste a lot of time for no good results. Now that I have easier focus bracketing, I need to try again.
Beautiful detail and color. I would be tempted to crop down a bit to eliminate the dark areas in the top corners but otherwise your processing and comp look spot on. Looks great.
Imagine living in a place that doesn’t get frost, well often anyway. How novel! It’s snowing again now, but it won’t amount to much and it won’t last. A dusting as they say. There was a natural blue cast to the shadows and I bumped the blue slider very slightly to enhance it. Also nudged the orange channel slightly toward red for further color separation with the yellow stem.
I did crop it a little, but thought I needed the top of the stem for balance and continuity so I left the corners and even darkened them more than they were just to make them less interesting. Maybe that didn’t work…hm…
Hi Kristen
Ok when do we sign-up for the stacking class? In my first quick look at this photograph, I only saw a leaf with frost on it and I studied the detail, from the top of the frame down. That is were I found all the little focus points. Very Nice.
Peter
Ps I like the open framing better.
Thanks @peter - I did a two part blog article about stacking earlier this year if it’s something you want to check out. I’m torn about the crop, but both work.
