Bog Rosemary

Wayne - What a cool looking flower. Never seen one before. The water drops really put this over the top. And salute to your skill and patience for shooting from the Kayak !!.

I used to have these in my garden in B.C. .beautiful work Wayne, the water drops put this in another class !

A new bloom for me Wayne. I really like how well this came out, dk. BG and water droplets. Well done!

Wayne: This is magical. Great find and a superb capture and processing. Most excellent. >=))>

I love everything about this image. I like the contrast between the flowers and the background and I agree that the droplets add immeasurably to the image. Your persistence certainly paid off.!!!

Great work, Wayne. Outstanding floral image.

The flowers and water drops are great and your processing really lets them shine while keeping enough detail in the leaves to tell the whole story. How neat that your burst had enough shots to make for a good stack.

Outstanding This was well worth the effort. I love flowers with water droplets and this is among the best I've seen.

No question the water drops really make this special. Nice work.

Beautiful flowers! I love the water drops. You did an excellent job on the focus blending. Very nice!

Well put together, Wayne! Pretty darn good for an impromptu wag at a focus stack! And from a kayak, no less!

Hi Wayne What an accomplishment And from in a kayak Well composed with fine light and color. plus those water drops with the splend refractions
Albert Darmo

Sweet image! I am not familiar with that plant, as my frequent stomping grounds extends from FL to Tennessee. Having shot often from a kayak, I can appreciate the quality that you managed with this. Needless to say, the water droplets are the finishing touch.

Paul (FL)

Wayne:

This is a phenomenal achievement - doing a focus stack HH at 506mm and on a kayak!!

Fabulous image.

Am thoroughly impressed with your unconventional stacking method here! Was the BG really that dark? The droplets are gorgeous...very cool shot!

Thanks everyone!
Since I only shoot in the wild, and often end up where tripod use is not possible, I developed this technique out of necessity.
Manual focus-blending is really not that hard if you have a steady hand when shooting, so any motion results in just tiny closer/farther adjustments, rather than lateral or up/down. Since most of our cameras shoot 5 to 8 frames per second, it's often possible to find two almost identical images with slightly different planes of focus. Just selected, cut and paste the sharp parts for layers to superimpose over fuzzy parts.

EIRINI: Yes, the background was really that dark, at least compared to the subject. I shot in shutter priority with a negative 2-stop exposure compensation. As a result, I did not have to do any burning, blurring, etc. because the background was just very dark water in the shade, and it was a couple of feet behind the flowers. This "black water" it pretty typical for boggy environments (and it works great for reflections, too -- sort of like a black mirror). I am not a fan of artificial backgrounds, and I would actually prefer a bit of OOF greenery back there, but this worked out well for this image.

Most excellent image, Wayne !! The droplets, colour balance and light are all first rate, and the flowers look gorgeous on this black ground.

Wayne, I am very glad that you have found this photo of some years ago, because it is a real beauty of the photographer and of the nature together.
Cheers.

Fantastic colors Wayne. Manual focus blending (stacking) ! I have never tried that. I always do focus stacking using Photoshop and then edit the mask where the Photoshop has not done what I wanted. But you have done the focus stacking masterfully. Love this balanced image. I too resort to my 100-400 where my 100mm failed. The Teleconverter is helpful. Congratulations on the weekly pick.

I am still loving your work with flower intimates in their environment.

A very well deserved weekly pic

Hi Wayne Congrats on a well deserved WP
Albert Darmo