Wow, does time fly. I have been in Arizona for the last month enjoying the sun and working on non-shooting photo projects while parked in  my RV. It’s been great: t-shirts and flip flops for the last month. Not sure I ever got to do that this early in the year.

I have tried to get some photography done and finally got out last week as the flowers are showing up all over the place. Here is a no-name place north of the Kofa NWR in Western Arizona.The brittlebush has exploded in bloom.

One technique I have been using a bunch is the focus stacking technique of focusing on the background for one shot and then focusing on the foreground for the next, then blending in Photoshop.

That helps a lot when it’s windy and blowing the flowers around. I can shoot at a faster shutter speed keeping the flowers sharp while focused on the foreground, but that makes the background go out of focus. So you shoot it separately for blending.

Then I stack the sharp background on top of the sharp foreground and blend that area on top of the foreground image. It works pretty well, but one caution is that when you are really wide angle and change focal point pretty extreme, you change composition some as well because lens elements are moving and then features don’t match.

You’ll know it when that happens because it will be very difficult to over come and match features.

Related Posts: Photographing Interesting Rock Formations, Using HDR in Poorly Lit Landscapes

Great eBook: