I love exploring and photographing the many areas of mosses/lichens/mat daisies/liverworts in old glacier valleys and braided river valleys close to the alps. Sometimes, rather than examining and photographing details of individual species, it is very satisfying to be able to appreciate their interactions and the beauty of the communities that are formed. While various species are no doubt very competitive, such community scenes often appear harmonious…much like humans I guess. Photographing these in peaceful and often remote areas is to me a real joy. In this case the image contains areas of Raoulia (mat daisy), Racometrium (woolly moss) and (I think) Polytrichium.
Specific Feedback Requested
General comments and criticisms always welcome.
I find it quite difficult to achieve ‘good’ compositions of these mixed-species communities but feel that the result in this case is generally OK. I would have liked to arrange the Polytrichium near the bottom of the image instead of the top to make things a bit more balanced, but there was too much dying material around the edges. What do you think?
Technical Details
1/80s, f8, ISO 200
M4/3 30mm macro
LR, PS, Cropping, tonal adjustments, Topaz Denoise AI
Oh this is so cool. And I agree that finding compositions in these kinds of scenes is mega hard. I tried to with club moss in leaf litter and failed miserably. So I like this arrangement of colors, textures and shapes quite a lot. What baffles me is the noise. It is still a bit crunchy and I think it might be due to underexposure? I have no idea what the lighting conditions were, but I don’t have any other explanation. ISO 200 on the G9 is pretty clean. So other than that, there isn’t much to say negatively about this photo. Let me also say I am nerding out with the fact that you name the species here.
Thanks @Ronald_Murphy and @Kris_Smith for your comments.
Yes Kristen, the crunchies as you call them are the result of some sharpening after a bit of DeNoise. It surprised me because the sharpening was really minor but I thought it was needed to showcase the woolly moss. In hindsight I should have left it without sharpening. I have always thought that my G9 images don’t seem as clean as those that you post and I am now thinking maybe there is an issue with my camera. I still prefer it to the Oly M4/3 bodies though as I like the size of it for my hands and the position of the controls especially the joystick for focus points.
Nerding out!..surely not…just that I thought you might ask what everything was if I didn’t name them. Cheers.
It’s probably not the camera, but rather that you may have applied sharpening twice. DeNoise can and often does a good amount of sharpening alongside the denoising operation so if you do it again either in Sharpen or in Lightroom, things can look weird. Maybe try running the raw file through DeNoise alone and compare. Lenses matter too, but the Oly you used is pretty great or so I’ve heard.
And yeah, the way the G9 handles is a dream. I went from a GH3 to the G9 and it was like night and day. The joystick!! OMG that thing is great. The viewfinder! The customization! Every now and then I think about maybe getting an S5, but then I wouldn’t be able to carry my “70-200mm” in my pocket to switch with the “24-70mm”. No way full frame equivalents are that handy.
I feel the same, Kristen. Have spent enough years with heavy gear and find the G9 utterly liberating. Being able to put a macro lens or equiv of a 70-200 in my pocket is wonderful. I have just bought a used Panasonic 12-60mm f3.5-5.6 as a small general walkabout lens. My main stuff is much the same as yours it seems except I have both the 30 and 60 macros and the Oly 75 that I use with ext rings. I don’t have a big bazooka, just the 35-100 that suits my work (not a bird fancier).
