Showing posts with label Focus Stacking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Focus Stacking. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

TWIP Raptors and Foliage at Fontenelle

Warning...massive photo post!!!

Last weekend a couple of photographer friends and I made our way to Fontenelle Forest in Bellevue for a walk about.  I had never been, so I thought it would be a very interesting to say the least.  One of the things I really wanted to see was the Raptor Recovery of the area.  I have seen many demonstrations of the magnificent birds they have at the location, but never actually visited.  This was a great opportunity.  

Carrying my trust camera I was able to capture some fun images of the birds and also happened to catch a couple of interesting finds along the walking trail of the wilderness as well.  

Taking photos of the birds was a little difficult as most that have tried can tell you, that you have to take the photos through a cage.  The rule of thumb is the closer you get your lens to the cage, the less you see.  So I used a telephoto as close to the cage as allowable to get these shots of the birds.  While the birds are located in a cage, you don't get the beautiful backgrounds and sweeping skies that go with most of the wildlife photos, but you do get the opportunity to see close up what these birds actually look like.  Looking into their eyes, you get a sense of their personality.  

Here are a couple shots from Raptor Recovery followed by a couple of nature shots from around the forest.












Sunday, August 13, 2017

TWIP Focus Stacking a Praying Mantis

So this week, I found a baby praying mantis in the backyard and decided to capture it for my collection.  Praying Mantis are some of my favorite insects just due to their shear coolness.  I am unsure if it was a male or a female, but believe it to be a female as it didn't appear to have wings.  Females are larger and cannot fly due to them not having wings.  The males are much smaller and are the flyers of the bunch.  

This photo took place in my boxwood hedge which provided excellent camouflage to the bug.  No one saw him there but me.  I am pretty good a spotting little things as I was really into macro photography when I first started this journey, so I tend to spot things most don't.  

He was very keen to keep an eye on me even though I caught him glancing at a cricket in the area a time or two.  I was hoping that he was going to pounce on the cricket so I could get some carnage, but he was more interested in me not squishing him than food at the time.  I bet the cricket would have been more than enough for this guy as he was so small.  I used my macro lens with a 36mm extension tube and a continuous macro light to photograph this little guy.  

I ended up using 15 of the 30 photos I took of him in this position to make the below photos.  My previous focus stacking tutorial on here will give you a better idea about how I stack my photos.  It is pretty simple, I import the photos into lightroom, verify the photos I would like to see stacked together, and then import them all into photoshop.  Now photoshop doesn't do as good of job, at least the version I have, as some of the dedicated focus stacking software out there, but it works for what I use it for.  

In photoshop I align the layers and then stack them together.  I then touch up the resulting image as best I can and there you have it.  Takes about 10 minutes per picture if you were looking at it in a time sort of way.  

Here is the baby mantis.  As always, click on the photo for a larger version.  Like my Facebook for more of my work Facebook.com/alderimages.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

That time at Heron Haven

An adventure to Heron Haven this spring revealed some very interesting little creatures.  I was initially going to view the baby goslings but their mommies were a little more aggressive than I wanted to deal with being with my 4 year old.  We kept our distance and instead investigated snails, frogs, and turtles.  I didn't come very equipped, just my trusty 300mm f/4 so macro photos were very challenging.  I think we had a good adventure and learned a few things as well.








Wednesday, June 14, 2017

TWIP Neale Woods Nature Hike


A photography friend and I took a recent trip to a local nature preserve called Neale Woods north of Omaha.  Ticks were plentiful and flowers were spars.  We did encounter one flower that was pretty plentiful, so I decided to try my focus stacking technique.  I knew that we would more than likely be taking photos of the same flower and in an attempt to be a little bit original, I thought I would do that.    Now the challenging part of the whole focus stacking in the wild, is there is nothing to brace yourself on unless you carried a walking stick or a monopod, the wind was blowing like crazy (which didn't play nice with my suddenly developed allergy), and I didn't want to walk to far into the grass for fear of coming home with a tick attached to every part of my body.  Ticks are plentiful this time of year and walking in a nature preserve by the river is always a wonderful spot to encounter these nice little #$@#$.  So with that, my attempts.  

I had a couple different runs at the same type of flower, but due to the wind, lining them up in photoshop took a lot more work that I was willing to spend. So grabbed one of the shots that I preferred and worked with it.  Below are the results.  I also caught a wild daisy during a slight halt in the wind. 


Next, I had recently purchased a Tiffen VariND filter.  For those who don't know what that is, it is a neutral density filter that you can turn from 2 stops to 8 stops.  For the novice, stops are the amount of light that the camera lets in.  Thus, using this filter along with my Fotodiox 10 stop neutral density filter, I was able to move the light from regular to 12 or up to 18 stops slower.  Why you ask?  There were clouds moving over head for most of the day and at 2pm in the afternoon, you really need to make it dark coming into the camera as possible to get the illusion of movement.  Not wanting to hold up others with us photographing things that day, I did a couple quick shots.  One was 2 minutes and one 90 seconds.  The two minute exposure, I was using the full 18 stops and it wasn't nearly long enough of an exposure.  I adjusted the exposure and stops using the VariND and 90 second brought out all of the shadows in the building and the grass, exposed the sky correctly, but blew out the clouds.  Now that I have an idea, I am going to try this spot again sometime for a more dedicated session.  Below is the photo to go with the story.


Saturday, June 10, 2017

TWIP Verbena

I had some flowers come up in the back yard planted a very long time ago.  They never came up prior to this year, so I was pleased to see them.  Flowers bring an ever present opportunity to do a little photography.  I for one, enjoy photographing flowers, but not like most people.  I prefer to focus stack my photos to give the flower the most detail you can get get, while leaving the background a smooth and creamy look.  A very generous Facebook friend provided me with the name of these lovely little flowers,  Verbena.  

I decided to photograph each bloom's color for this blog.  Who knows, maybe I a nice coffee table book may come out of this idea.  Anyway, here are the shots if you haven't seen them already.  I intend to make a nice simple focus stacking tutorial for anyone who is interest.  I'll link it to this post and future focus stacking posts.









  

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Winter's Last Chance

I wrote this a couple months ago but for some reason never actually published it.  So here you go.

Winter is winding down and that's a good thing.  I am looking forward to warmer temperatures and color.  One thing that the winter does offer is a chance to see some amazing ice crystals.  You really have to look close to see the intricacies of the little crystals, but if you get down close enough they are beautiful.  Last winter I took tons of snowflake photos and never really got anything that wowed me that much.  I had a backlit snowflake that I thought was pretty cool, but everything else was mediocre in my eyes.  Saturday provided an opportunity to see a couple snowflakes and they were perfect.  It wasn't too cold that they were just frost pellets.  The air wasn't warm enough for rime to form.  So I went outside for a couple shots.  Fifteen minutes is about all I had to get something since the sun was setting and it was getting pretty dark.  It is very hard to see and focus on snowflakes through the lens in the first place, let alone in pitch black light.  Working with millimeters of focus depth makes taking multiple exposures a must.  I usually take between 7 to 20 shots of each flake and then focus stack them in photoshop to get a, hopefully, great looking snowflake.  Another problem I was running into with this little shoot is the plexiglass I was using.  I left it out pretty much all winter in anticipation of being able to shoot snowflakes.  Month after month of not having great snow, I gave up and let it sit.  The ice had formed on the surface an when trying to brush it off, I scratched it.  Now that may not seem like a big deal to the naked eye, but once your get down really close it makes a noticeable difference.  A little touch up was needed to clean that mess.  Anyway, here are a couple of flakes I happened to capture.  Thank you for looking!