Image:
Description:
My wife takes daily walks in the woods with our two dogs, she heard me mention that it’s been awhile since I’ve made a Christmas card and since the weekly challenge here at NPN is for just that, I may try to come up with something.
Well, since my wife has the same interests as I do, she stayed in the woods a little longer that usual gathering material for me to photograph (I wasn’t aware that she was doing this).
I was a bit surprised when I saw her lugging half the woods to our porch 
As I enjoyed my morning coffee on the porch, I stared at the material until I decided what I wanted based on what she found and the image above is the result, it isn’t “Exactly” what my mind was seeing but it’s darn close.
Specific Feedback Requested:
Any and all feedback always welcome and desired!
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
The area on the tree limb where the greenery is planted was already hollowed out from rot so that’s where I decided to stuff some green leaves (two flavors).
The berries are as they were with the exception of two berries, rather than glue two berries at the top to make the shape of a Christmas Tree, I added them in PS, care to guess which ones?
The whole arrangement was laying on it’s side so adding the moss and lower leaves at the bottom would have been pretty difficult so I added those in PS (separate shots of leaves and moss).
I wanted to have the starlight on top of the berries as shown so I was somewhat deliberate in the placement of the remote flash with the soft box because I wanted to make it appear as though the starlight was the source of light for the scene.
I thought the turkey tail fungus was fitting because we usually have turkey for Christmas too (and ham), that’s my lame excuse anyway 
The curved Merry Christmas words were meant to give the impression of a lamp shade but that may not have worked
Yes, in reality, this is a composite, both in PS and composed with separate elements before the shot that weren’t together in our woods (or so my wife says ).
Sorry for being so long winded, I wanted to make sure everyone knew that this image was “SET UP” (Fake, the materials are real though ).
Sony A7R IV, 90mm Macro, f22, 1/250s, ISO 100, ACR, PS
f8 to f16 seems to be the sweet spot for sharpness on that lens but I wanted a little more depth at the sacrifice of some slight diffraction and I wanted a good solid black BG and f22 is better at that than f16.
I hope it comes across the way I was intending,
All the best,
Merv
