¡Hola!

This has had so many titles in the past 12 hours, ranging from Holy Cow! WOW! to Every Which Way but UP.

I've been so excited since I watched this image emerge from 5 stacked photos. What fun! Simply a pile of spent bracts and blossoms under the halogen light of my desk lamp, placed carelessly on a piece of white paper. With little a little help from processing and cropping to get rid of the extraneous edges of the paper, the image has magically turned from a practice project in the wee hours of the morning into a masterpiece.

If I have a nit and I'm not sure it is, it's simply that the stem end of the foreground blossoms and it's shadow are just slightly OOF. Mostly it comes from the bend of the paper being place on top of whatever was available. But I think that stem, it's shadow, and the shadows of the bracts help provide dimensionality.

I've been playing on and off with image stacking for quite a while, trying this, that, and the other, and last night I finally got the how, the why, and the wherefore into my head.

Pat, you're right. With these skills, I could be dangerous And, I encourage all of you to give it a try.

I'm really excited and I hope you folks agree. Please give me your feedback.

D700
60mm lens
f/3.2
1/40s
ISO 200
spot meter

Thanks for leaving your comments and suggestions.



Carol