Wild Artistic Photography Tours And Workshops Facebook ad: “Through the Ferns”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

1647038846780365

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network

Relaunches

0

How we count

Ad text

Through the Ferns Russell Falls is one of those places I’ve photographed many times, so on this visit I wanted to find a viewpoint I hadn’t tried before. The problem was the ferns. There were plenty of them between me and the falls, and finding a position that revealed enough of the waterfall without simply having foliage blocking everything became a bit of a balancing act. Eventually I found a viewpoint where the ferns became part of the composition rather than something I was trying to avoid. I actually liked the feeling they created. Instead of presenting Russell Falls in its entirety, the layers of tree ferns give the impression of pushing through the forest and gradually discovering the waterfall beyond. Technically, those same ferns created another problem. At 90mm, with some of the foliage quite close to the camera and the falls much further away, there simply wasn’t enough depth of field to hold everything sharp at f/8. I was fortunate there wasn’t much wind, so I took two exposures using exactly the same settings. One focused on the waterfall and another focused on the foreground ferns. Settings: 90mm | f/8 | 0.5 sec | ISO 100 Back home, I focus blended the two exposures in Photoshop. Even with very little wind there was still some movement between frames, so a bit of warping was needed to line up the ferns. Focus breathing also meant the two frames didn’t match perfectly in scale. Sometimes focus stacking sounds wonderfully simple. Take two photographs, blend them together, job done. Photoshop occasionally has other ideas. For me, though, the photograph is really about finding a different way of seeing a very familiar subject. Russell Falls is instantly recognisable when photographed from the usual viewpoints. By hiding parts of it behind the forest, I think some of that familiarity disappears. You have to discover the falls rather than simply being shown them. And that was exactly what I was looking for.