The Artful Engineer

This week’s post features a collection of small details from my time in Michigan, like the leaves, above, that are starting to dry out before they fall. The way they are lit by a spot of sunlight really makes them stand out and their texture pop. At 400mm, I was using all the lens I had to get a tight view.

I always enjoy seeing and photographing lichen, whether it is growing on trees or rocks or propane tanks. Not only did this tree have a nice coating of lichen, it looked like it had rolls of fat. It’s not often that a tree seems so well-fed.

This next image also includes lichen, but the underlying plant is anything but plump. This image was a bit of an experiment: I wanted to emphasize the thick jumble of branches, which I thought would best be done with them all in sharp focus. This meant that I had to focus stack images. I captured 40 images that covered everything from the very closest twigs all the way to the mud in the background. I decided that having the mud in focus just de-emphasized the branches in the foreground, so in the end I only used the near half of them, which is what is shown below. I’m thinking that it might be better still if I discard even more, so that the orangish-green leaves on the left side, in particular, are a little out of focus. This might take some manual focus blending (which is tedious). Or, I could desaturate the colors of those leaves a bit to make them stand out less. I have a few choices if I decide this image is worth spending more time on.

This close-up of a cedar was made next to a parking lot. If you go in tight for details, you can make nice images anywhere.

If you don’t believe me, this image is of a garbage can. Same parking lot.

Continuing with the parking lot theme, this last image was a quick grab on the way into an electronics store to buy some ear buds. This image has a strong graphic pattern with a nice color palette and good textures, too.

Well, those last two images are probably odd choices for wrapping up my series on Michigan, but that’s the way it worked out. Next week we will transition to the mountains of Colorado. I hope you will tag along!