photoartflightDay Lily Stamen Image Stack
The Day Lily’s were blooming in our garden, so I wanted to do some closeup image stacks for practice. Usually I use a 50mm or 100mm macro lens, but I wanted a little more distance to concentrate on the stamens. It was a cloudy day so it was as if I was using a giant soft box so there were no harsh shadows to deal with. I used a 150mm macro to help concentrate on the stamens and still give me the working distance I wanted. This was a 6 image stack, focused pretty much just on the stamens. I did not want the whole flower in sharp focus, so I concentrated my focus stack only anthers on the end of the stamens. Again combined and assembled in Photoshop. Each Lily has 6 stamens attached at the base of the petals, and each stamen has a stalk called the filament that ends with a two-lobbed anther filled with yellow dust like yellow pollen.
photoartflight 
I love flower photography, and love macro, however I have never tried stacking, I love your picture! I really need to try stacking. I have PS & LR so I could do it, just need to read up on it. Thanks for the great post and new ideas! 🙂
Stacking in Photoshop is a lot more predictable in the newer CC Photoshops, than the CS versions. With flowers it is a little harder unless there is absolutely no breeze, but can still be done. Certain floral subjects work better Shot wide open and more stacks, where others work better stopped down more and fewer shots. Takes practice and trial and error and you start to get a feel for what you need for certain subjects. Going for softer look images usually only needs a few images. But they are fun to do and also it helps you see your subjects more creatively! Once you get stacking down, it is fun to do floral panoramas!
Good Morning and Thank You So much for your reply! I have Photoshop/Lightroom CC, however I do want to try this process, I have had great fun with LR, however in the beginning, I was so intimidated by LR, it looked like so many things to learn, and they best was was to jump in and push this pull that, slide this over and see what happens. It was so funny, I had to be brow beat by a large number of photographer to set my camera to RAW, once I did (and found the camera would NOT self destruct or go into nuclear fusion, all was fine and I would never go back. Like anything new especially with photography and post processing, it can look so daunting in the beginning, but is not as overwhelming as it appears to be.
Many Thanks and have a great weekend! 🙂
Hi again. You can also set your Photoshop in preferences to open jpegs or tif files in Raw and adjust them like you do with raw files. Not as good as the actual Raw files, but can help some if you have images you liked shot as jpegs.
Gorgeous image!
Thanks! They are colorful! Sometimes it is fun to wander around your yard and see what you come up with