The Fly

The common housefly is something we don't often take a close look at, but in this extreme macro image you can really appreciate how colourful it is, with its rust red eyes and black and white stripes. I was surprised to see that the wings even have an iridescent quality to them, kind of like oil on water. Image is the result of a stack of about 6 images -- not perfect, but the best I could at the time. Nikon D600, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f2/.8 with Kenko extension tubes.

Yellow ladybird

As far as I can tell, this is a spotless yellow ladybird. This is the second test of focus stacking -- this is a stack of four images focussed at slightly different points to produce a final photo that has most of the ladybird in focus. Nikon D600, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 with extension tubes.

Behind bars

The thing about photography (especially street photography) is that you always need to have your eyes open for opportunities. Looking at this photo taken in Siem Reap in Cambodia, you'd think that nobody would be able to miss such a prime photo opportunity, but you'd be surprised -- I was hurrying to a bus together with a bunch of journalists when I noticed this kid looking through the bars of an extremely colourful school window, but most of the journalists that were with me didn't notice it at all and walked right by. I only had time to snap about 5 photos but this last one was the best. The thing about a shot like this is that you need to make sure the framing is exactly square on to the windows otherwise it just won't work. AF-S Nikkor 24-85mm VR f/3.5-4.5

Focus stacking

One of the things about Photoshop is that the application is SO feature-packed that on a nearly daily basis, I am learning something new about it.

I've always been interested in macro work, but one of the biggest advantages of shooting digital and using the most recent versions of Photoshop is the ability to do "focus stacking," i.e. shooting many exposures of the same subject, but with each shot, slightly varying the focus.

These photos are then loaded into Photoshop and then with a bit of automated magic, the software will blend the in focus parts of each image into a seamless, sharp photo.

If you have Photoshop CC, doing this is pretty easy -- you just load up all the images into it, then go into Automate-->Photomerge and choose all the images you just loaded (uncheck all the check boxes below this).

Next, select all your stacked layers and then go to Edit-->Auto-blend layers and then check the "Stack images" check box in the dialogue box that opens and then wait for the magic to happen.

Nikon D600, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8.