Recently took a family vacation to the beach. I did some research and found that part of the island we were on in NC was pretty undeveloped, so I ventured out there one morning for sunrise. It was about the only colorful sunrise we had the whole trip…and what did I do…point my camera at sand! I did manage to fire off a few shots toward the light, but I was drawn to the textures in the sand. I have 3-4 of these with different compositions and elements. This one has a critical error in that I didn’t take enough images to truly complete the focus stack so there is one band that is considerably out of focus and another that is partially out. I tried to manage that a bit with a stronger Orton Effect than I would typically consider using. The scene was very flat so as I worked in more contrast, the blue tones got really really blue. Most of my processing was a combination of adding contrast and reducing saturation in the blues while maintaining the orange in the highlights. I loved the topographical map feel to these.
Specific Feedback Requested
Open to anything, does the distribution of highlights to shadows work, composition feel balanced, tones and colors look ok? Hopefully we can just pretend that little focusing error isn’t there…
Technical Details
Is this a composite: Yes
Three image focus stack. 200mm, f7.1, 6sec, ISO 100
Good seeing on your part. The design is wonderful. I like how the lines weave and undulate across the canvas. This works well with the soft focus. Sometimes the sand looks good each sharp texture and others it looks good soft. There’s a pretty good square crop of the top part of the image as well.
You know NPN has fully turned you to the dark side of intimate landscapes when you start doing things like passing up sunrises for images like this
Okay the focus stack has some small technical issues. But the important thing for the long run is that you had the vision to see the light and the patterns contained in the wider scene, and were able to extract a nice abstract image. Learning how to get better at focus stacking is relatively easy, being able to see creatively is more important. The processing of contrast, color and saturation looks good too.
I agree with @Igor_Doncov there is a nice square comp lurking in the top half, that’s where the light and patterns are most interesting to me.
Don’t expect to see much like this at Acadia later this month, you are going to have to pursue rock abstracts instead…
Nice abstract Dave. I love these suprises when I go out with a purpose and am given something else even better. THe comp is spot on to my eye. I also see the crop on top which Igor and Ed are talking about. The light looks perfect for making this image. Ill have to look at the beach more closely!
@Igor_Doncov Thank you! Good point about the bottom being a bit less interesting than the top. I think this was the first image I made of these and what initially caught my eye was the sweeping curve in the LRC. I have two or three others that probably make better use of the full frame, and one that I know I got the stack better!
@Ed_McGuirk haha, so true! It has been a work in progress for a while as I realized the opportunities for vistas in central Ohio was pretty slim. What I learned from this outing is to over shoot the number of images needed for a stack. It’s just data…Usually when I see/hear people talking about focus stacking they talk about three images (foreground, mid, and back). I can see that I need more than that. I have another especially if conditions aren’t changing rapidly. I have another one where I shot 5-7 images and I’m sure it came out technically better. Hopefully my eye for these types of things continues to improve…I’m so looking forward to the trip, I’m within a week!
@Mario_Cornacchione thank you! Learning to be more open to what is presented and where I am finding I’m interested in the moment. I wouldn’t say I’ve been going out without a plan, I intentionally chose this location because of the potential for an “epic” sunrise. What I’m doing though is not being so locked in when I get there. Initially what got me looking closer at the sand were the ripples that reminded me of images from Death Valley, I have one shot with a really cool sweeping pattern that has some elements that are making it harder to process (damn animals walking across the dunes…) but once I saw that my focus really shifted. I still got some shots of the sunrise, I probably missed the “best” light, but nobody knows that but me.
DOF is determined by three factors – aperture size, subject distance from the lens, and the focal length of the lens. A lot of the “3 image” focus stacks are grand landscapes, shot with a wide-angle lens such as a 16-35mm lens. You shot this at a focal length of 200mm. When you are using a telephoto lens to do closeups, 2 of these 3 factors are working against you to narrow the DOF you can achieve with a single shot (relative to a wide-angle grand landscape where your subject is further away). Thus you need more focus stack brackets to counteract the more narrow depth of field, when using telephotos for closeups.
The cameras with focus bracketing will march through the shots at the proper focal distance for the camera settings to get full coverage of the scene you are shooting. Manual focus bracketing is much more difficult because of the problem you encountered and because you move the camera when touch it to focus. Photoshop auto-align can only do so much with images that aren’t aligned. Many cameras now have this auto bracketing feature. If you’re serious about focus stacking I would get a camera that does it for you.
@Igor_Doncov when I first heard about the auto focus bracketing, I was kind of surprised it hadn’t been incorporated into the Sony I have. It seems like just some programming that could be added via a patch also…who knows!
When I do it, I generally have touched the back of the screen to move the focus point. Part of me wonders if I would acquire focus at the nearest (or furthers) point, then switch to manual and use the focus ring with focus peaking turned on. That may serve as a bit of a visual to ensure there is overlap between the frames…Might need some testing.
The square crop is the winner for me. It has a liquid quality that is very pleasing.
In terms of stacking…turning on focus peaking should help to some extent. I’m surprised it’s not on your camera, too. Odd. But not a total deal breaker. Using a tripod and maybe a 2 second delay could keep the camera vibration to a minimum - or using a remote release. I’ve done the finger on screen thing with some stacks as well, usually when something is changing in the frame - the light or may there’s a breeze - and I have to pick my moments on the fly.
Well, I haven’t any advice, just admiring your photo. This is well seen, and I love the square crop. I, too, am surprised that focus stacking isn’t incorporated into the Sony a7 line. Actually, I find it annoying - it can’t be that difficult for them to do that.
I like both crops. They both have a nice balance of warm and cool colors. I like the abstract nature of this, but at some level, it feels a bit empty. The pattern is mostly random and the elements are essentially edge-less. I think the light makes it an interesting composition, but maybe one footprint or rock or plant or puddle would have created a focus feature to let the eye settle on something.
For focus stacking something like this, I use the camera focus-peaking feature.
Ok, so this image has really been bugging me. The more I looked at it the more I felt I had taken a sledge hammer to it instead of a chisel. So I reworked it. there are some color shifts happening that I don’t love but I’m happier with this version. Obviously it still has the stacking issue, which I think I resolved in a future shoot (lesson learned).
I wanted to get this one “right” because I have 2 or 3 others that are similar and I wanted to use this one almost like a reference for those. I don’t think I’m skilled enough yet to get them exactly the same but I wanted to have a better target to aim for. I’m interested in your thoughts on the two, I have posted it above as well. I didn’t do the square crop for this one yet.
