Parasols in Birch Wood

Parasols.
I wanted to convey the birch wood habitat in this one.( hence the messy background detail)
Shame its low down, big in frame and stacked but there you go.
Part of the answer to Toms questions. If i wanted to convey a picture to some one who had never been in the country and seen a parasol then I reckon this would about do it.
D200
Sigma 50mm macro.
100 ISI 15th @f5
stacked images.
Tripod
Remote.
Angle finder
JohnR

Great work John.
I've never seen this type before, looks very interesting.
You could've waited until after you took the photo before taking a bite out of the left one though
Well done.

Geoff.

Thanks
They are in fact delicious!
JohnR

They look wonderful, is it that time of year already :| ? Only nit is that the middle birch is more infocus between the mushrooms than int he rest of the shot ;)

Very good to eat John as you know
Frederic

The birch to the rear does look slightly odd due to the different areas of focus but I might not have spotted it if Neil hadn't mentioned it. A nice environment shot and good for breakfast with bacon by the sound of it

Hi John, nice shot and a good use of stacking, :toast To me this is what stacking is all about, using the technique to enhance the image and give a sense of presence and clarity.I have been playing about with this on fungi recently myself and came up with a few problems and a useful solution, check out this evenings post by me, your critique on it would be welcome.

I ahve found the balancing act between contrast and clarity to be tricky with bigger subjects like fungi, but had some goos results.

Finally a quick question, does a specimen have to be perfect to give a good image? I see the damage to one of your parasols and wonder this as I find it spoils the image for me slightly, but realistically 90%of fungi are damaged in some way and that is nature, Hmmmm an interesting conundrum, is it just our tidy minds that like everything perfect? Even though that is unatural and we should be photographing the natural world

:

Full marks for showing the damaged specimen. Great stacking stuff.

I like it. Great stacking and I'm not fond of stacking.

Ian

Thanks
I here post another with a different set of stacks -using a couple more in the back set. I prefer to see more detail in the back and front sometimesbecause when you think about it thats how we see them. Really OOF backs and fronts are not really that natural. But that's the beauty of stacking you can play around as you wish. Don't forget the dof on the actual subject part is only about 2mm per shot.Not sure but I don't think f8 is the optimum aperture for this sort of thing on my lens. I've had some cracking stuff at f4 but its harder to do. If you use a smaller aperture with more DOF I can't see the point in taking more than a couple of shots. But hey - thats all the fun of it !
Cheers
JohnR

I like these John and I do like the fact we can see their habitat. I would prefer to see the left parasol intact though.

Matt

Hello John.

Super capture and the enviroment works really well in this shot and you where right to do it this way with the background working so well. Shame about the one Parasol but still a good image.