Focus on the Front Yard

Normally, any sort of close-up photography results in images with a very shallow depth of field. They way around this is to take lots of photos and compile a summary using only the parts of each that are in focus. This is called focus stacking and is used extensively by the folks who make those jewelry photos where all of it is in tack sharp focus.

I thought I'd give this a try and see what I get. Above is one of our tulips you've seen several times already, but this time it is all in focus.



I learned that it is harder than it looks to find a good subject for the method when the range of things the camera can focus on is limited. However, it can make some really nice images when the magic works. This is the dwarf japanese maple in our front yard. I set up the tripod on the front porch and pulled us a seat. Relaxing way take photos.

My favorite is this dwarf evergreen (of some sort, I don't know about these things) also taken from my seat on the porch. Not only does the yellowish green of the new growth add interest to the photo, you can see the strand of the spider's web stretching across the image. I did not see that when I took the photo.

The only downside for this technique is that it took about 50 images to produce these three for you to see. That and the hour of process time for three photos makes this an investment. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.