I love to search the local swampy areas for composition of leaves. It takes a lot of looking to find the right combo of leaves,its like a treasure hunt. Fuji S2 Pro, Sigma 180 macro, Tripod, f32.
Interesting image Mike. The tight comp works in this case for me. Isn't it with this sort of photography you could easily arrange the leaves the way you want them? Mike out of interest, why did you use f/32 here?
Hey Vincent, I have alot of fun searching for natural interesting comps on the forest floor, but I do have some images where I make arrangements of the leaves. I shoot in two styles, either the lens is wide open for a more abstract look, or stop down all the way for maximum focus. My main styles of shooting is to find an interesting main subject with a complimentary background, and bring it all in focus. I've heard all the info about shooting stopped down all the way will cause some image quality loss, but with photoshop you can correct any short comings. I learned my lesson a few years ago when I had shot this great image of a leaf floating on the water, and to this day I'm totally disappointed that I had some soft spots in the image from not stopping down all the way. So since that day if I what it all in focus, than I just stop down all the way, and don't take any chances for any soft spots. I've had people give me all the technical reasons why I shouldn't shoot at f/32, but all I can say is it works for me, and I don't hear any complaints from any of my customers that buy my images. I teach this same f/stop style to all my workshop students and at the end of the day when we process their images on the computer, they all look great. If I'm shooting totally parallel to a flat subject, than I won't need to stop down all the way, so I will shoot in the middle ranges, but as soon as I change the angle of the focal plane I'm stopping down.
Swamp Leaves
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