always having the background in too much focus made for bad
bokeh and blah photos.
So I stumbled on the idea of focus stacking, I don’t know where. It
could have been from John Shaw or another one of the well-known
close-up photographers. I can’t remember. At first focus stacking
seemed a whole lot of trouble, like rubbing your tummy and patting
your head at the same time. And my results were terrible. It
surprises me that I did not just give up and walk away. I did in fact
quit it a couple of times.
Somehow I persevered, although my first stacked images were not
encouraging. I guess somewhere in my mind I knew stacking had
some rewards for me. I thought it might help to scratch that itch I
had always felt for photography. I am a nature photographer
probably because I am a naturalist. I know a lot more about nature
than photography. Having been raised by a mother who was a fine
artist, I was early on imbued with a sense of color and composition.
That has never been a problem for me. I have a good eye for the
beautiful. Instead, the problem for me it has always been trying to
get what I see in my head onto a digital image.
Aside from technical issues, there were a multitude of other issues
that had to be sorted out relating to photography. What was I trying
to achieve? Did I want my nature photos to be fit for a field guide?
Was it realism I was after or some impression I wanted to capture?
Was I hunting for specific nature subjects or was I a ‘found”
photographer, photographing whatever I came across? Did nature
need me to add art to a photo or was I looking for the art in nature.
All this had to be sorted out and that took a lot of time.
In the end I found that I was not a stalker of bugs and critters. I
resented being invasive into their worlds, even if the photo was
good. Although I am a realist, a simply realistic portrait of a scene is
not satisfying to me, not that one exists. In fact, IMO all
photography is impressionistic, the photographer’s impression of
nature and life. I am repelled by attempts to improve nature with
human art. You can’t salt the salt, and nature is perfect just as it is.
I am definitely looking for the art or perfection that is already in
nature. And I am admittedly an impressionist, someone that