Those with a stomach strong enough to have digested my blog for a year or more will recall the flirtation with focus stacking. Alas I have done little since last Spring, mainly because the birds won’t sit still whilst I fiddle around with my macro lens. Today I had my first attempt in 2013. One failure and one reasonable success. To preserve any sense of competence I might have acquired, meagre though it may be, I am only going to show you the goodish one.
Somehow the upload does not seem to replicate the warmth of the tones I see in Lightroom. No matter. Here are a couple of ‘abstracts”. The first is Lichen Script:
I think this may be one of the Graphidaceae lichens, possible a Phaeographis sp. I’m sure someone reading this will know. 🙂
The second is an epiphyte against a background of lichens.
The epiphyte may be Psychotria serpens.
And then 2 stages of the lepidoptera life cycle. The first is the imago of the Common Five-ring , Ypthima baldus.
And the final shot is the larva of the moth, Orvasca subnotata.
I am not sure which instar it is, maybe 6th.
So there we are. I worked hard for you this morning. Tomorrow I won’t. Its my monthly lunch with my ex-colleagues and whoever said there is no such thing as a free lunch was wrong. I get one every month. Then a day at home with Mrs. Ha and on Sunday, subject to contract, a flight to Dubai.
A little something to keep you going? Ok, here is Scutellaria indica, the Skullcap.
All downhill from here 
Very nice attempt. I really like how the focus worked on the first one. Good job.
I have yet to figure out how I missed this post. Maybe it did no show up in my email notice. But really like the moth and the first pic of this series of photos. Very nice. And the blue or purple flower is very pretty as well.Andew you have so many cameras and lenses that I stay confused about what in the name of Sam Hill you shot with what,. Good poetry there as well. 🙂
Excellent! Very creative too.
Now I’m going to have to look up focus stacking. It’s obviously not about getting geological formations in Scotland in focus.
I’m trying to remember where we went walking somewhere and the place was full of amazing lichens (which I am useless at pronouncing – so want to call them litch – enz. It was probably Scotland again. I do like them though, they are quite fascinating and slightly surreal.
The detail on the five wing and the larva are lovely.
They still don’t blow up.
Sounds like an action-packed weekend. Hope you enjoy it and buen viaje to Dubai. I’ve probably said that before but better twice than not at all.x
May I suggest reading these old articles as they may help with understanding focus stacking. Essentially its taking lots of frames of the same thing with the focal point changed each time so they just overlap and provide a blended image that is sharp from front to back without having the background sharp as well.
Scotland is brilliant for lichens and I vacillate between like-enz and litch-enz too.
Thanks for those links, two interesting posts there and some nice images I thought.
How kind 🙂
BTW, Lulu is following the dog blog and rather impatient for something to read with her morning Organix. Any chance Pippa could put paw to keyboard?
Um. Possibly. I’ve been on decorating blog duty over the last couple of days.
Pippa is just grateful for any blogs posts that appear these days and wonders why he used to get 40+ comments back in the days when I only got a handful.
C’est la vie. I may update Pippa’s yet, although it could be yet another toast post (rather a nice rhyme there I think).