Category Archives: focus stacking

Playin’ the Bells

By Jim | Published March 27, 2017




After posting my first-of-year Virginia Bluebell in bloom on Friday, I headed back out to see if the bloom had progressed further. I was pleasantly surprised to find many bluebells in bloom. Here are a few of my favorite images I captured this past Friday in the rural Missouri woodland: With so many brilliant blue […]

Also posted in 2017, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Wildflowers | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Little Pink Bells

By Jim | Published March 20, 2017




From a little over a week ago, after we had a snowfall, I found these cute little pink, bell-shaped flowers in one of our wildflower gardens. They resemble the blue harebell wildflowers a lot, but I’m pretty sure these are not wildflowers. My wife planted a lot of non-natives in the area, mostly iris and […]

Also posted in 2017, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

More Signs of Spring

By Jim | Published March 17, 2017




After the recent snowfall, I also found some early, woodland wildflowers growing around my rural property. The Virginia Bluebells had some small buds, still being covered by the leaves, trying to poke out: I then set up my camera on a tripod to capture some images for Focus-stacking: This focus-stacked image was made by capturing […]

Also posted in 2017, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Wildflowers | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Almost Spring

By Jim | Published March 15, 2017




… but not quite! A look at the calendar says that spring is only 5 days away. But yesterday’s snow puts that into question! After a morning of snow, I hiked around my rural Missouri land to see what photo opportunities existed. The snowfall was quite “trivial”, but with temperatures below freezing, it sure wasn’t […]

Also posted in 2017, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Prairie Featherweight

By Jim | Published October 19, 2016




Another image captured on Snowball Hill Prairie a week ago. I’m always fascinated finding something like this, wondering who it belonged to, how it arrived at it’s location, and how it looks so peaceful: Photographic Equipment Used: Canon 5D Mark 3 body Canon 180mm, f/3.5 macro lens Bogen 3221 tripod with Ballhead ISO 800 Aperture […]

Also posted in 2016, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fall Aster Color

By Jim | Published October 17, 2016




The fall landscape is beginning to show it’s fall colors on my rural Missouri land. Today’s post features one of my many fall asters that are now brilliantly showing their fall colors: This was a focus-stacked image I captured a few days ago. Using a very large aperture (f/3.5), I captured 21 images, varying the […]

Also posted in 2016, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Wildflowers | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wonderful Blues on the Prairie

By Jim | Published October 5, 2016




Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been photographing some new prairie wildflowers for me … the Downy Gentian. These wildflowers are a very deep blue and very mesmerizing. And in some conditions, the flowers look nearly purple. All the Gentians I’ve been finding are quite small, ranging from about 8-inches to 16-inches tall, and […]

Also posted in 2016, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Wildflowers | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ladies’ Tresses

By Jim | Published September 28, 2016




I hiked around Snowball Hill Prairie yesterday morning and found quite a few neat things. In today’s post, I’m featuring a focus-stacked image (combining 9 individual images) of a Ladies’ Tresses wildflower (Spiranthes cernua), a member of the Orchid family. I actually saw 14 of these small beauties (they grow to about 14″ to 18″ […]

Also posted in 2016, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Wildflowers | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

From Michigan to Missouri

By Jim | Published June 22, 2016




During my hikes around Snowball Hill Prairie, I ran across a couple of Michigan Lilies (Lilium michiganense) that had just begun blooming! This was a new wildflower for me, one I had not seen before. Quite a lovely find in the middle of a prairie! Here are a couple of images I captured: After capturing […]

Also posted in 2016, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Wildflowers | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Purple Rain, Part 2

By Jim | Published April 28, 2016




Yesterday, I got a chance to combine together some images I captured of the Bird’s-foot Violet for focus-stacking. Using Helicon Focus software, I combined 10 images into a single image, to get a single image with increased depth of field on the subject, but without influencing the background focus. It ended up pretty nice, but […]

Also posted in 2016, Blog, Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Travel Photography, Wildflowers | | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment