Focus Stacking

I don’t want to get overly technical with today’s blog post.

That kind of writing isn’t especially appealing to me.

Also, I don’t have a massive following at my share site.

In other words, nobody is going to care that much about what I did in camera for me to go into great detail.

What’s important to note here is that I wanted this particular composition to be sharp from bottom to top of frame.

Accomplishing that in one shot wasn’t possible with foreground elements so close to my camera. The rock is something like a foot or foot and a half away from where I set up.

To get around this kind of thing, photographers like me will take multiple exposures and select a different point on the camera to focus on in each shot, then blend them together in software.

It’s not entirely dissimilar to the photo montages that American photographer Scott Mutter put together (I’m a fan enough to have hung posters of his work in my residence at various stages of my life).

In this case, I’m not creating a juxtaposition of different subjects like Mutter but rather building a single coherent image from multiple parts.

I have very rarely focus stacked compositions since I started photographing landscapes.

Not only have I rarely had a need to do so—I usually get away with room behind the frame to get everything in one go—I have not seen using this technique as important enough to go to the effort.

What I mean by this is that I find that having some areas of a composition softer than others has usually served my purpose and intent.

On this morning, I wanted the grass and small rock to be in focus.

I want your eye to take that in first and move through the frame to the reflected sky on the relatively calm water and from there on towards the thin slip of sunset.

An argument could be made for going one step further in this scene and doing a long exposure to smooth out the choppy ripples of ocean.

I considered doing that but elected not to on this occasion.

My reasoning was that the rougher ocean serves as a contrast to the stillness in the pool.

I also ended up cutting out some of the sky.

There’s a bit of unnatural looking streaks likely due to a passing plane that doesn’t suit the mood of this otherwise peaceful sunrise.

I felt pretty lucky to witness and capture this scene that morning.

On the drive down, I didn’t see anything particularly strong happening in the sky to suggest I would get the kind of vivid colors that I did.

The sunrise lasted a good 20 minutes after I finished up with this attempt at focus stacking.

I took a number of other photos that I may or may not share at some point down the road.

For next time, I want to get back to sharing photos from my trip to Japan.