July 2019 Digital SLR Photography 75
3
Coastal wild flowers There are a few types of wild flowers that
flourish on cliffs and by the coast, for instance thrift is usually in
abundance about now while valerian and heather start to appear at
the end of June. Heather can last throughout August and sometimes
into September if it’s a cool summer. There’s also beach asters and oxy
daisies in June, but they're rarer. I suggest getting as low and close to
the flowers as possible with a wide-angle lens to make use of them as
strong foreground interest, especially if the sun is shining through or
side-lighting them in morning or evening light. With smaller megapixel
cameras you may be able to get the image sufficiently in focus using
a small aperture, but the higher a camera’s pixel count the harder it
can be to get a shot sharp front to back as there’s so much information.
I found the only way to get a landscape with large foreground interest
sharp is to focus stack, to take at least two images at f/13 with the lens
set to infinity and to blend them together in Photoshop. While
Photoshop can automatically focus stack, I prefer to manually align
the images and remove the area I don’t want. It’s very time-consuming
but the most accurate in case any wind caused movement.