We have had lilies growing in our garden for some time, but on this occasion I noticed the lovely soft light filtering through a slat fence onto them. I just wanted to capture that whilst maintaing a soft feeling of the overall image with just a small area in sharp focus.
All comments and suggestions are very welcome.
1/250s, f3.5, ISO200
m4/3 60mm
Darkened the background and some cropping in LR to remove distractions.
Oh this would have caught my attention, too. We have Callas (if that’s what this is) here, but they’re usually in a tangle of other plants and difficult to isolate at all, never mind so dramatically. Two things strike me here - first is the blue in the shadows on the petal. It looks odd to my eye, but I’ll fess up and say that blue shadows are a pet peeve of mine (as is blue water in water falls), so if it was really there I’d leave it. If not, it might be a white balance issue. Second is the light fall off, it seems like you could tease that apart so that there is more light in the mid-tones. Everything seems a little clenched in terms of exposure. And I wish you’d done a focus stack here. The stamen peeking out is OOF and I’d love it if it was sharp. Still, a dramatic photo in some pretty sweet light. The dark background works nicely here.
Hi Kristen. Thanks for taking the time to comment on this.
I know, I know, I should be focus stacking. The thing is, I just really like differential focus, probably baked-in to me before focus stacking became a thing. I stack up to 200 shots for some fine high-res macro work but seem to be very resistant to stacking just a few shots in the field. Doesn’t make sense to anyone but me probably, but it’s just an aesthetic thing where I see large objects often look best with a very small portion in focus whereas tiny subjects need to be fully sharp.
I see what you mean with the blue tint in the shadows, but when I look at it in LR and PS I can barely notice it. Clearly I need to recalibrate my monitor or something. It is not a white balance issue because if I do a WB in the bluish area the whites take on a very warm look that certainly isn’t true to Lily, or the light she was photographed in.
Similarly for the tones, I know you are correct in recommending more light in the mid-tones, however the tones in the posted image are true to the scene, which is why I left them that way. I guess this is the same thing I debate within myself for many images before posting: do I present a well-manicured image with good tonal range that will have wider appeal, or an image that I feel represents what I saw and felt with just a few bits and pieces removed (wayward insects etc).
Many thanks for your help. Cheers.
Maybe think about stacking as expanding your depth of field to include more interesting elements in your subject, but not necessarily all of it. That’s how I approach it when I’m doing a stack. So with this scene because the stamen is such a bright and colorful element, I’d want it in focus, but maybe not the entire flower. With careful selection of frames and restriction of bracketing, you could have just the leading edge of the petal in focus up to and including the orange bit (I keep calling it a stamen, but it might not be). You wouldn’t have all of the flower in focus so to keep that soft feel even if it isn’t how our eyes would see it. With subjects this small we see all of it sharply at once. Unlike landscapes where if we concentrate our vision to just one part of it, the rest falls out of focus. That’s because we have one fovea per eye and that’s the part of the eyeball that has the highest concentration of receptors for light and color.
Where the hell am I going with this…? I guess just to say that maybe you should play with doing light stacks or limited stacks that get the interesting bits crisp and leave some fall off to OOF areas outside of that. The same goes with natural light. I think we see much differently than a single image presentation because our pupils are constantly making minute adjustments to allow or restrict light into the eye. Our camera does this only once per shot and so playing with exposure and luminosity values can more accurately mimic how our eye would take in a scene.
Just some things to think about…
I LOVE Calla Lilies and love this photograph of one! I like the cyan cast as it seems natural for some light from the sky. I like @Kris_Smith’s idea about just enough of a stack to get the spadix (?) sharper. I could go either way with less contrast – the whites and shadow detail are good here so I think you could have a choice of softening it or not.
I think this composition of the flower would also work well with a horizontal – more room on the left and possibly less top and bottom.
I hope my post didn’t seem admonitory or like a scold. There is no right or wrong way to do these and if they make you happy the way they are, that’s what matters. I really like what you post so keep them coming!
Hi Kristen. No problem at all. Your comments are fine…in fact all of the comments here on NPN are fine, and as with everything in life we are all different and (fortunately) like different things. I just happen to like narrow DOF and am perfectly happy to accept that it is not to everyones liking. Cheers.
Hi Phil,
I like this very much as is, the soft lighting and soft focus is a plus IMHO.
I like the light bleeding through the walls of the throat of the stem and the highlights on the Spadix.
I also like the stem coming in from the lower right corner and the headroom at the top is very appealing to me.
I’m not really understanding why everything has to be focus stacked these days.
Funny how things change with time, I tried some manual focus stacking ca 20 years ago and the community ripped me apart for doing it.
My monitor must need adjusting as well because the only blue I see is very subtle, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been mentioned.
Anyway, Very nice image, Phil!
All the best,
Thanks for your comments @Merv .
Yes…stacking…that thing that rears its head now and again.
I don’t mind stacking for my high mag work as it is a technical type of photography anyway. Outdoors in a natural setting, however, I sometimes find that stacking, being the technical operation that it is, detracts from the enjoyment and feeling of exploring a scene in the viewfinder and creating a view to reflect that feeling.
I realise that a stacked image may reflect what was seen by the eye at the time, but I prefer to photograph what I feel when I see a scene. That may call for either stacking or for just a wee bit of the image to be in focus. If the latter, I accept that the resultant feeling for the photo is personal and may not able to be conveyed to another viewer of the final image.
Like you, in years gone by I stacked images by manually moving my camera along a rail, or by carefully adjusting the focus ring, in very small increments, however it usually felt too technical and made me feel too divorced from the subect of the photograph. Now that most cameras (hear this Sony!) have a stacking feature that is easy to use, however, it is much easier to remain ‘connected’ with the feeling for a scene while photographing it. As a result I don’t have any particular feelings for or against stacking as long as the end result of the image reflects a photographers mood or feeling at the time.
Enjoy your new Sony …without in-built stacking. Over the last couple of days I have been toying with getting that camera as well, but the tilting rather than articulating monitor has put me off somewhat. Need to think long and hard about that as I currently use the artic monitor in portrait mode a lot of the time on my wee Lumix G9.
Sorry about the ramble. Cheers.
Very well put, Phil!
It’s easy to lose the connection that you’re talking about when it goes so far beyond the camera.
I agree, sometimes with high magnification it’s almost a necessity to focus stack but it has to be a shot that’s worth doing all that work.
Strange thing for me is that I don’t tend to worry about sharp focus all the way through if it’s a shot that I took since I remember seeing it in real life. However, if it’s a shot of something I have never seen before and it was taken by someone else, it’s nice to see it all in sharp focus, does that make sense?
I battled a little with myself over the A7R IV not having the articulating screen but the EVF resolution and other features outweighed that issue for me. Sony had the articulating screen on the A7 IV but they went back to the tilting screen for some reason.
I did find an app called Monitor+ for my phone and that allows me to see the screen and change settings with an almost real time view (very minor lag), the only thing is I have to mount the phone on top of the camera with a cold shoe adapter, not ideal but it does help me since my eyes are old and tired 
In camera focus bracketing and/or focus stacking may be something that I would like but never having used a camera with those features, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
I probably would like those features but I don’t care to buy another camera for quite a while.
I did read somewhere that focus stacking and focus bracketing could be done through a firmware update but I don’t know if they will release it for previous cameras, I’m not counting on it.
For me, I’m not too concerned about it, I don’t mind being deliberate with the process of using a rail if the mood strikes me.
The Lumix G9 is nothing to sneeze at, it’s a nice camera!
BTW, the new Sony A7RV has the articulating screen and focus stacking if you’re interested.
No need to apologize for rambling, I’m obviously guilty of that too!
All the best,
