The climber on our garden fence still has plenty of dried leaves hanging from the branches. Yesterday, this gave me the opportunity to try some macro shots with focus-stacking. When photographing outdoors, a slight breeze can create big issues when making a single image. After making several unsuccessful images outdoors, I decided to bring some of the leaves indoors. I created a set with a black background and lit the leaves with a speedlite and shoot-through umbrella.
Dried Leaves
I shot three images, focusing on the nearest point on the leaf, the furthest point of the leaf and a middle point. The three images were stacked with Helicon. I then converted the color image to black and white for the image above.
Snow was in the weather forecast for a White Christmas this year. This Christmas morning we were greeted with a few inches of snow during the night. Gazing out the window, one of our bushes had accumulated snow on the remains of dried flowers. These looked like snow caps on the end of every branch!
Snow Caps
Here is another image of the snow caps.
Snow Caps, No 2
During the next few hours, the sky cleared and the warmth of the sun melted the snow. Later in the afternoon, we visited our neighbor Chris, where she had prepared a meal that we all enjoyed. A couple of bottles of wine and lots of laughter made for a Merry Christmas!