White Dogwood

[Diane Miller]

(Norm, I'm running out of naming ideas! Not very imaginative, I guess.)

I think it's a Pacific Dogwood, although a planted specimen.

Shot yesterday with another morning of clearing fog. Canon 7D2, ISO 400, 1/800 sec, f/5.6 for a smoother BG. Stack of 8 to get all the flower in focus. This time just for comparison, as there weren't significant overlap issues, I tried PS's auto-align and auto-blend, and it worked well so I didn't try Zerene this time. Minor retouching and some BG work to remove an intruding leaf and piece of a petal.

Very minor adjustments in LR5 and to PS CS6 for the stack and retouching. A little canvas added to and bottom, cropped from the left slightly.

[Ron Conlon]

Of the series, I like this one the best because of the beautiful background, the diagonals, and the droplet. You can keep them coming and give them numbers for titles if you like ;)

[David Cowling]

I love the painterly feeling of this image. Excellent job of stacking. The fog/ overcast conditions worked very well for the whites in this image. For me it's just a pity that there is an OOF white petal in the background. I have never tried stacking so don't know how difficult it is to get all in focus.

[Jonathan Ashton]

The main subject is excellent, I think I am beginning to notice that stacking is good when it is good but when it is not so good it is a little distracting. The main flower has lovely detail and clarity but the OOF bloom tends to pull my eye which is a shame because otherwise I really like the image very much indeed. Easy for me to say now I doubt if I would have noticed myself until I had seen the image posted!:S3:

[Diane Miller]

Thanks guys! I've always liked shallow DOF but getting a main subject sharp on a soft BG is often not possible, so I tried a hybrid approach here, just stacking the main flower, similar to trying the same approach with a 90mm tilt-shift. The front tip doesn't look sharp but it's just lost in the similar-toned BG.

It's not easy to find an interesting mid-ground in these trees, but it's an enjoyable quest. Next time I might try stacking all the way into the mid-ground, but that would need incredibly calm air (or some pruning shears).

I posted an "artistic" version in OOTB.