The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I came across this Foxtail Agave in the arid greenhouse of a local garden and was particularly taken with the wonderful tones and furled leaf hugging the middle.
Specific Feedback
There are two points I’m curious about:
I captured this with my Lensbaby Velvet 56 and chose a rather shallow depth of field (I’m guessing it was around f/4; LB lenses don’t communicate that metadata, and I don’t keep track!). I’ve never focus stacked an image, and this one seems like a prime candidate. What do you think of the DOF? Would you focus stack this? The day I took this the greenhouse was packed (the garden decided to funnel everyone through the greenhouses on their way to the butterfly exhibit… not fun!) and I couldn’t really linger too long in the pathway in front of this plant. But I can go back and try again.
General feedback on the processing is welcome. I used radial gradient masks in LR Classic to create a subtle vignette but not sure my attempt was successful. The goal was to give a soft illumination to the center and that furled leaf.
Technical Details
Canon EOS R, Lensbaby Velvet 56, probably f/4, ISO 160, 1/50", handheld. General post-processing in LR Classic with the aforementioned masks to create subtle vignetting.
I really like the artistry here, with the unusual DOF of the LB. The soft colors are a nice contrast to the areas of detail on the leaf edges. My eye is a little bit drawn to the darker leaf that exits the top – I wonder about lightening it a bit? And maybe a graduated burn from the LLC to push me back to the very interesting unfurling leaf.
I tried not to go overboard since it’s basically a soft image, but I think this retains that idea with adding some drama. I hope you don’t mind. It was a joy to play with and I had a lot of fun. Each step was small and built up slowly and progressively. Here’s the layer stack w/the TK8 actions and masks -
I love this! This is my kind of image! The color and composition is awesome in my view.
I have just started focus stacking recently so I can’t offer any real advice or feedback on that subject yet, but I do feel this would be a good stacking candidate, that said, the area selected in this image for sharp focus was right where it should be for a single shot IMO. The DOF looks good to me because I enjoy seeing parts of it in soft focus.
My attraction to portions of images like this in soft focus may be the reason I have put off stacking myself (just personal taste I suppose), however, there are images that would for sure benefit from stacking so it’s time I take my journey to the next level.
The vignetting helps to push my attention towards the center as you intended.
It’s always a tense feeling when you’re being pushed along and that can effect your images but it looks like you did very well considering!
I can’t say that you should be focus stacking, but I can say that I think I missed a lot of good opportunities by not pursuing it sooner in my journey.
Regarding Focus Stacking, I do a lot of it with floral images. But I also like to shoot wide open and get that soft background. This one would work both ways, but each would be a completely different image. I like this one, but could see that one with complete sharpness would be just as striking.
Ok, I’ll talk about the stacking thing. This would be hard. It looks large. And detailed. So if I would try it I’d back off and get a telephoto lens. That would already compress the DOF somewhat by the nature of a telephoto and it would give you some working distance. Then you’d need a lot of images I think. Just to cover the entirety of the structure. I would use a capture method that I don’t know that other camera manufacturers use and that is to pick a spot in the middle and let the camera take photos on either side of that in succession. Alternately you could choose to take the first photo at the closest point to you and work backward, if you could figure out what that is. Last, the overlap between shots would have to be carefully done not to have any missed areas. With leaves this big any blurry bits will ruin the stack. If you have a lot of experience with stacking, I’d go for it. It’s only 1s and 0s after all.
I think @Kris_Smith’s tweaking brought out a lot, but I still want to see that top leaf lighter and the bottom ones darker.
This is a good one for a partial stack – shoot it all (front to back, to keep from going insane choosing the end points) and then decide how far the stack should go. Stack to different depths and then decide. Electrons are pretty cheap these days.
