I’ve been finding pieces of blue spruce trees around my backyard a lot lately. I am not sure what animal is responsible for breaking off these healthy portions of the tree, but I wish they would knock it off. Blue Spruce trees here in Michigan have enough pressure on them and could do without the vandalism. If it is squirrels, perhaps they would use a defense of running from the fur demons on sentry duty throughout the day. However, their judgment in unnecessarily leaping to unstable limbs when already in a position of safety is worthy of criticism.
As I picked up a few pieces, I thought about trying to make some macro photographs of the interesting details. Spruce tree needles are a bit of a challenge for depth of field. They don’t lend themselves to having a singular feature to emphasize and let the rest fall out of focus like a flowering plant or leaf of a deciduous tree. What I wanted was the entire branch segment of this conifer to be in focus just like my eyes were viewing it in my hand.
I applied focus stacking here in the same way I did for my Leaf Creatures project. The resulting image is a combination of 20 exposures, each varying a little bit in the focus point. While it may sound like a lot of work, it really isn’t bad when you have auto-focus bracketing as a function in your camera. For this, I am using my Fuji XT2, already quite old but still very capable. (a phrase that may or may not have appeared in a recent birthday card)
You still have to use software to “assemble” them into the final image – but that is largely another automated process that isn’t perfect, but pretty damn good. However, contrary to my Leaf Creature experience with using a black background, the subject selection tools in both Lightroom and Photoshop sucked for these segments of a spruce tree. So cleaning that up was a manual effort.
I would have preferred NOT finding these healthy pieces of our Blue Spruce trees laying around my yard as I am concerned about their declining health already. Maybe I am just not paying my sentries enough.
But what a nice opportunity to enjoy the beauty of those small branchlets. The word “glaucous” comes to mind when I see that lovely blue dusting on the needles. Focus stacking can be a lot of work but I can’t even begin to think about cleaning up all the places a subject selection missed to have a uniformly black background. Too many nooks and crannies! But thank you for doing it – clearly, you are still very capable. 😉
Thanks for introducing me to the word “glaucous”. I keep telling myself to buy a better black background that won’t be as much work to clean spots. One day I’ll get around to it.
Another beautiful result from your successful focus stacking technique, Mark. I love the complimentary blue-green tones. I know birds, and some small mammals, are attracted to spruce trees, the most appropriate suspects for the pieces in your yard. However, if you want to look at it another way, some Native Americans used spruce twigs as ceremonial items and often gave them as gifts to bring good fortune. Hopefully, it’s a sign of a bright 2023 for you and yours. ?
Thank you for that tidbit on indigenous tradition Earl, that’s awesome. It better be a pretty darn good year then – ha! It is still a mystery on who or why it is happening. It may be my faulty memory but seems to be more this year than ever – and I wondered if it had anything to do with the drought we are experiencing. Maybe animals are looking for water or sap?
Beautiful colors, that’s for sure. Too bad that something is ruining your trees.
Thanks, Alessandra. Let’s just say they are “plucking” and it is a good sign as Earl indicated.
The image looks great. I know all about that quite old but still very capable thing 🙂
we might have a few good shutter cycles left in us ?
Wwo! You discover then learn how to us all these photography tools to create some amazing images. You also are a good teacher for me and entice me to venture out with new stuff. What software do you use?
Helicon Focus. I think there are other options on the market now, but I think this one has earned its reputation as the best.
I’m surprised that it took “only” 20 frames to get this amount of sharpness from a focus-stack. I would have expected more.
But either way, I really love this. Detail and color are simply wonderful.
Well, I probably could have used a few more as some tips were lost. It’s a difficult subject to check *all* the tips. Thanks though.
I noticed that, but didn’t think it was detrimental in any way.
That’s beautiful, Mark!