The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic / Expressive
About This Image
The Monarchs have ignored our milkweed plants and they’re growing, well, like a weed. The benefit to me is that I’m getting multiple opportunities to shoot the seedpods and seeds which are some of my favorite subjects. Every cloud does have a silver lining. >=))>
Feedback Requested
I wanted to give an increasingly intimate look at this bunch. Any preferences?
Also, the first image is a stack and normally I wouldn’t stop down so much but if you’ve ever shot milkweed seeds just the tiniest whisper of wind moves them all over the place. If I get out in the garden early I have a few minutes of calm so I have to work as fast as I can while the conditions are favorable. My camera also does not stack automatically so I have to adjust each frame individually. For you stacking experts, do you find shooting at such small apertures problematic?
Technical Details
All with Sony A7rIII and Sony FE 100mm f2.8 GM macro and 2xTC
Image 1 is a 8 image stack ISO 1600, 1/6 @ f22
Image 2: ISO 1600, .4 secs @ f22
Image 3: ISO 1600, 1/4 sec @ f16
Bill, all three look very good. I do prefer #1 because it shows off the individual seeds near the bottom, the tip of the pod and more seeds about to take off near the top…the entire milkweed seed experience. I routinely stack with moderate to small aperatures unless I’m going for a soft background. Getting good overlapping in the frames is easier with small aperatures and there can be fewer artifacts from overlapped sharp areas in the final stack that aren’t sharp in the same frame.
Beautiful images, all, Bill. The first is my favorite compositionally, though I like all three. Very well done. And, yes. I’ll often use a pretty high f-stop when stacking as it just makes things easier.
I love the first image. It is a wonderful abstract composition, with vibrant colors and engaging lines and shapes. I’m not a stacking expert, but I do try stacking with a hand-held camera and putting the pictures together in Photoshop. My success rate is about 50%, depending on how steady both I and the target can be for 10-20 seconds. If I didn’t mind carrying a tripod and lots of pictures in the stack and I was photographing static subjects, I’d use a shallow depth of field while focus stacking. But with a handheld camera, I use a deep DoF just to be sure.
