Sun Flowers

Great in your face comp, don't see anything to change about it. Dramatic backlighting is what everyone wants. I might desaturate the yellows on the horizon or work on more of golden tone there. Great photograph!

Very nicely executed to get the much needed DOF and to hold the highlights in the sky. The foreground dominates the scene but eventually allows the eyes to move up and soak in that nice sunset.

Beautiful shot Marc. The colors, lighting and textures in the clouds all stand out. Really clean comp!

Really nice unique comp and dramatic lighting. With such a prominent foreground it took quite a dramatic sky to make this work. Didn't think that the balsamroot was in bloom yet - got to get out there!

Daniel, yeah, it definitely is. In fact, this was 7 days ago now, so I'm sure it's about peak at the moment.

I've seen lots of images from here, but never one with this perspective. Fantastic work. Personally, I could also see cropping a little off the top to put even more emphasis on the forground. Either way, this is top notch.

Wonderful image Marc. I was waiting to see some of your spring work with the balsam root.

Incredible composition - a painter could not have dreamed up a better scene.

A painter would have put a butterfly in there too

Just wonderful, Marc! The in your face comp is fantastic. I'm jealous, spring hardly feels like it's started up here.. maybe I'll have to make it down there.

Great perspective, and a beautiful scene! I love the color and light in this, and really enjoy looking at it. Wonderful work.

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI

lovely light and colours here Marc!
small nit: I notice a slight magenta cast on the stems below the sunflowers up front? On the one hand it gels nicely with the sky but on the other hand I wonder if toning it down slightly would enhance the image?

Beautiful image

The flowers in the foreground are in perfect composition. Just wonderful. Love the light, the sky and the lit flowers. The best image I see today here.

I love this comp and light. Really enjoyable scene.

Just incredible. If I had to nitpick I might prefer a smidge more room for the petals on the right. Really inspiring stuff, here.

Absolute eye candy! Great work Marc!

Spectacular!

Ok...that's it...focus stacking it is. Nothing beats the impact of an eyeball full of fg. Sick shot.

aF

I don't know how you do this but the image makes me think I'm looking at the print.
Fantastic creation Marc!

I really like how you have the flowers dominating this scene and how they're arranged.

Incredible image as usual Marc! I didn't see much lupine yet out there, but sure enough you found and incredible shot. Your processing is amazing as well on this. These types of shots with multiple focal point blending and multiple exposure blending are tough to process well. You did a masterful job.

You made right choice regarding the weather. This is beautiful.

I am really going to have to start blending images. This is awesome.

Excellent, Mark. I like it all.

Extraordinary light quality and balance Marc. The depth of field is also amazing. Top notch work!

Zack, thanks. These types of detailed, stacked focus shots are as difficult as anything I've ever done in processing, which is saying a lot. I'm hoping people looking at these don't think there's some way to simply just automate the process or cut and paste things. It's way, way more involved than that. It might be easier in the future but for right now there's a lot of time and a lot of learning involved.

Sweet man! I really like how you emphasized the flowers by getting so close here. I knew I should get out there and have a look around... Cheers!

I could just look at this for hours...

Can't add much, but this is just downright beautiful. Not an easy feat to focus/exposure blend while shooting directly into the sun (not to mention the countless other obstacles you overcame that I'm sure the viewer has no idea about here), but the final product makes it look so perfectly natural. A real stunner here Marc, terrific work

Great shot pulling this together without much else than gorgeous skies and in your face flowers! Its been a pretty cold spring, and with the snow level coming down to 1000 feet tonight... I just don't think the flowers are gonna be much more than this, this year...but you never know! That lens is amazing! PS... is it just me, or do I detect a bit of noise in the green?

Incredible shot, love the in your face FG. My only (very) minor nit would be the flower on the right touching the edge of the frame, but this is probably a result of having to crop some of the image after focus stacking(?). The sky is just amazing as always. Nice work!

A wonderful flower shot, Marc. Beautifully soft color and light. The yellow light on the horizon really pulls this together for me. Excellent job with the blend and processing. I guess aligning the differently focused images by hand is the hardest part?

Now thats what i call "in your face"! Absolutely fascinating...and great dof-control.

Amazing!
Beautiful flowers, already.

Rick, actually things are looking quite good out there with some Lupines coming up now and all the plants appearing healthy. Barring a hard freeze tonight or Friday, it should continue that way. I don't think it's going to get quite cold enough for that.

Once again, I could tell this was yours from the thumbnail. It's a very nice image with lots of mood, although it's not as dynamic as much of your other work. I wish there was a hair more breathing room between the flower on the right and the edge of the frame. Also, I wish the tree wasn't there, but not much you can do about that.

Great shot Marc!
I was out there last night. I definitely did not feel like it is great year for the flowers. I'm just going off of what I saw two years ago though, I didn't go last year. One the drive in there are no flowers hardly at all on the left of the road before the ranch, usuaslly there it is full. The plants are very small and chewed up looking, and the lupine I saw was still about a week or more out, just stalks. There definitely are good clumps around though, just gotta walk around and find them.

Gotta love this one. Technically and artistically perfect. I'm really liking the exaggerated size of the foreground flowers.

It's still at least a week away, Jeremy. Looks good though. Just delayed a bit this year.

The thumb has Adamus painted all over it.
Another stunning example of your artistic and technical skills
What a great addition to your gorge photos.

I really like the attention grabbing flowers up front. Great tree breaking the horizon line, lovely color in those clouds too. Very nice work here.

(one the road via iPhone/iPad)

That is just a fantastic image Marc.


I too would reduce the yellows a tad on the horizon and I wish the right flower was not getting clipped on the edge of the frame, but otherwise a ridiculously beautiful scene.

Hope your enjoying "home" and family after your recent long trip.

BTW, doesn't that focus (DOF) bracketing eat up the storage cards like crazy or what? When possible I am now focusing on the closest object and then making as many as 15-20 increments to infinity (or to my farthest object) which can easily put me at 45-60 photos for one image (including exposure bracketing for each focus point)! I blew through 10 - 16 gig cards in one week and had to buy 10 more on the road to finish the trip I am currently on. But the print quality, especially when using a quality prime is out of this world!

Mark, I really don't know why you'd need 20 focal points or exposure bracketing, but I guess overkill is better than missing something. I know if the exposure is dialed in correctly and definitely find it easier to blend 4-6 than 2 or 3, but 15-20? Dang, man. There's some old large format shooters laughing their butt off right now.

So is there some instruction somewhere for this focus stacking tenchnique? I am definitely interested in it, but not sure how to do it. Doing normal blending seems to create some wierd effects.

Adamus Art

This is a great images Marc. I like the colors, the composition and it's depth of field. It amazes me that this image is so bright in the foreground.

Plus: It's postcard material for sure.
Minus (for me at least): Its postcard material for sure.
Nothin wrong with that though, it helps to have postcards to sell, gotta eat somehow...

Next one I post is anything but postcard material, Stan. That said, I am doing these really cool notecards with Sierra Club, and they are NOT using the same genre stuff one might think!

lol Marc.

The overkill is this: I have only done this in the field a few trip/shoots and found I did not shoot enough increments and found areas inconsistent (or obviously soft) in sharpness, also since I don't have a computer in the field (thank God) I have yet to really master what is necessary to get the most out of the technique.

What I am basically doing (in a mainly static composition) is using "live view" to find the closest object at 10X, focus manually on it, then bracket my typical + and - 2 stops (or whatever) then (without looking at "live view") I just move the lens a small amount toward the infinity line re-shoot and repeat. Depending on how close the closest subject matter is I end up shooting anywhere from maybe 6 at the least and 15-20 at the very most, focus brackets (also exposure bracketed). Sometimes I'll also use "live view" to see where the farthest object is its sharpest on the lens and then just make the increments go to there...

Not sure if you are using the auto align and the blending in PS but it really does an awesome job (wish I had known about it a lot earlier)! Once I get home and see how the files react, maybe I will find out I'm majorly overkilling it, but until I get that feedback I really have to have top class detail for the prints, so I'm willing to suffer for it (including buying 20 - 16 gig cards!)

How many focus brackets were used on this photo if you don't mind me asking? At least online it looks very nice.

Great shot Marc. I can't believe that I was two feet away from you when you took this shot :) I love the way you blended the exposures and the sky looks fantastic.

I'd be interested to see your rendition of this, Abdullah. Aside from the blending for DOF, the processing was very simple here. All the sky color and texture was done in RAW and the exposure blend was no trouble. Let me know if you want any help with it.

Sweet! Loving the in your grill perspective and the great colors above.

Hi Marc:

Wonderful image. Did you take four images from the flowers to the tree and then one of the sky?

Thanks.

Frank