To the Point

Image Critiques Weekly Challenge
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To the Point
To the Point961×1024 1.09 MB

Image Description

Newly sprouting limb on a cholla cactus trunk. Walking through the Sonoran desert, everything is sprouting with the abundance of rain we had this spring. The new limb and fresh needles are a striking contrast to the old bark and needles from previous seasons.

Specific Feedback and Self-Critique

Didn’t have a tripod with me so struggled to get all of the limb in focus and still isolate it from the background. Monochrome, given the contrast?
Any suggestions welcome.

Technical Details

Nikon D850, Nikon 70-200 mm f/3.5-5.6, ISO 1600, 200 mm, f/32, 1/00 sec, Handheld. Processing in LR, cropped for composition.

To the Point color Ed 3 BG effects
To the Point color Ed 3 BG effects1880×2048 2.92 MB

Thank you all for the comments and feedback.

Diane, Could be a nice subject for focus stacking with a wide aperture… Those are grat ideas and i may try, if I can find it again, diiferent angles or another lens for that effect. I have not done focus stacking. I have plenty of fundamentals to learn before adding new techniques.

Kristen, The [BG] competes for attention… I played with masking the BG, to see that effect and also practice techniques with masking. I ended up close to the original post, but did softer the BG some. I also tried some different crops to reduce the BG, but it put more focus on the emerging limb as the subject and I did not want to take away from the whole trunk as a study in textures.

Mark, that new growth stands out… That is what first drew my attention to this scene. I was the only new growth on the entire trunk.

Jim, Thank you. … cholla was a great choice for the WC… There are so many interesting textures in the desert. I did like the mix of bark, spines and even the smooth bist of teh new growth that comes through.

Again, thank you all.

2 Likes
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Very unique – to me anyway – and interesting! I love the idea! Don’t see a need to go monochrome but I wonder about desaturating the greens in the BG?? Could be a nice subject for focus stacking with a wide aperture to subdue the BG and really make the striking details pop.

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Agreed that this has potential. The BG competes for attention here and so I’d have gone in a little tighter (but not too close, ouch!) to eliminate that, or as Diane suggests use a wider aperture and do a focus stack. Lots of prickly detail to love.

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Marlin, that new growth stands out dramatically here. I think your comp. does a good job of telling the whole story of the Cholla and it’s location.

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Hi Marlin, this cholla was a great choice for the WC and I don’t even need to touch it for the texture to come through. Good lighting and separation from the BG. Like your composition with the trunk at an angle and the new sprout certainly adds some interest and splash of color to the scene.

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Replied earlier but didn’t ralize that wouldn’t go to you. Thanks again for the interest.

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I replied earlier, but did’t realize it wouldn’t go to you. Thanks again for the interest.

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I replied earlier, but didn’t realize it wouldn’t go to you.
Thanks again for the interest.

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I replied earlier, but didn’t realize it wouldn’t go to you.
Thanks again for the interest.

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To reply to someone, no need to quote them unless it’s relevant to your answer. Use the @ key and maybe start to type their name (without a space) and you’ll get a list of possible people to choose from to fill out the name. That will send them your reply. You can do that for several people in the same reply, as in your first reply.

Stacking: For tiny spines like this you’ll want MANY very close steps, and maybe not completely wide open. If your camera doesn’t offer it as a menu item you can change the focus increments very carefully by hand, the smallest movements you can make. (Very sturdy tripod, remote release.) Stack them with Zerene Stacker or Helicon Focus. If you use Lr, Zerene has a plug-in that will export them to the program. Don’t know about Helicon. There are 2 algorithms, DMap and PMax. I often use both and stack the 2 resulting TIFFs in PS and mask to the best areas of each.

Sometimes you get artifacts (things have to stay still) but mostly it’s amazing.

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@Diane_Miller , Thank you for the tips. Still trying to figure out this system.

Thanks for the tips on focus stacking. My camera does offer focus stacking and multiple exposure. Have used them sparingly as I believe that a well composed and exposed image is fundamental and I want to feel more confident with those skills first. I also started out in the film world and am slowly adapting to digital processing. Not opposed, just want to try to do as much in camera as possible first. I use LR now ,but, am working on learning more and will add tools as I progress. I have done one experimental scene using focus stacking, but have not put the images together, yet.

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I never do focus stacking itself in-camera, which gives a JPEG (ugh!) – just the acquisition of the frames. I should learn to call it focus bracketing.

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I checked out my camera, Nikon D850. HDR is JPG only, but what they call focus shift shooting, has other restrictions such as no Live View, time lapse, movie, HDR, multiple exposure or interval timer. Like I am using those anyway. I do use live view when shooting from close to the ground. Can bend that low anymore😊

I did look at the practice set of focus shift images I took, and they are stored as RAW files.

Still haven’t got into combining these images or blending, yet. I plan to, but, have lots of other stuff to get organized such as backups, starting to print, curating my images. I only have ~5000 images, but many are in old files on older external drives and computers. Unfortunately, most of the older files are JPGs. I also want to move from LR to mostly LR classic and some PS for processing. I don’t send much to social media.

I tried HDR in camera, but, did not like the effects so will do exposure bracketing, when I get to the point of starting to blend images.

How long did it take to get the blending processes down?

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I think focus stacking is very simple. I use LR (definitely Classic) and Zerene Stacker has a plugin to do the export from a selected range of raw files. Do any necessary (hopefully minimal) global adjustments to one and sync to the rest and export. You’ll end up with a TIFF. I understand Helicon will actually give you a raw .dng file back.

In LR, select all the stacked frames from a shoot and go to Photo > Stacking and set the interval to less than the time it takes you to repeat a stack. My Canon R5 stacks at 20 fps so I can set that to 2-3 seconds. Then you’ll get a neat filmstrip with each set showing as a stack. Then you can expand each set and work with it. I start closer than needed so I can usually delete the first few and often won’t use the frames completely to the end of a stack, to keep a clean BG.

Sounds like you’re in the early stages of this wonderful endeavor. You’re off to a good start – great camera, LR Classic and PS. Excellent to avoid these in-camera JPEG things. Ugh!!

Best advice for what sounds like where you are: get two large external SSDs – one as a backup. I rotate my backups with one stored offsite. LR makes it so easy to organize files, and flexible on an ongoing basis. My main catalog is almost 164,000 images, and changes daily as I add new things, delete old ones and re-organize. (Oh yeah – back up the catalog often, too. And – your catalogued images are not in some magic place – they are on your hard drive just where you put them – the catalog is only a database to let you find them.)

Are you Mac or PC? Both have excellent backup programs.

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Thanks for the follow-up and tips. I will file the focus stacking tips, for when I start using that. Pretty soon, I hope. Depends on how quickly I can get through the organizational stuff, do my regular job, and spend time photographing my grandkids. Then get back to the fun stuff!

Have a 5TB Ext HD I use for Photography and some work related files, backed up to an 8TB ext HD for backups of everything, and use a a 2 TB ext HD for working image files. I backup frequently, but not on a schedule. Mostly after I have loaded new images or have done a fair bit of processing.

I have a mac, so I do have some images in icloud. I am not using LR classic yet, but, am trying to figure out how to switch over. Since I will be storing more images and LR catalogue not in the cloud, I wanted to get my backup system and capacity up to speed first. I do subscribe to Amazon prime, so I have thought about putting images there as well.

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Oh that’s so coincidentally funny - I have an 8, 5 and 2 TB external hard drives that I use for various things. My local drive is for files I’m working on now and they get moved over to the 8 as I finish with them. All my video editing is on the local drive as well. I’m using a new MacBook Pro w/1TB drive and 32gb. Max M2 chip with 38 GPU cores and it smokes!

For some info about stacking from a lot of us here on NPN, check out this thread -

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Setting up LR is simple. Organize your files as much as is practical on your main external drive and tell LR that’s your working drive and it will catalog the files. Tell it to put the catalog on your main internal HD, and set it up to back up to one of your drives that gets backed up. Then you can add, delete and reorganize as much as you want, whenever you want, but ONLY from within the LR “Folders” section on the left of the screen. That will move things as needed on your drives. If you move or rename things on the drives directly, LR will not know about it and you’ll have to sync, which is a nuisance at best and flirts with being a disaster.

Set LR to back up the catalog whenever you exit the program. A small catalog will go fast.

Cloud stuff is great for document backup but is not practical for the large files from a modern camera.

Best of luck with all of it! Good you’re starting with a manageable amount of images.