I had a hankering to try out a bit more macro photography, and also play around with Photoshop and Lightroom.  Specifically, I wanted to do more with Blended Layers, and to play with the High Pass Filter method of sharpening photos.

I have used Blended Layers before.  Most notably, I was very pleased with the Grandfather Binoculars effort (look at the last picture on that post, preferably clicking it to go to and view it in SmugMug).

Speaking of SmugMug, the gallery for this post is HERE, but you can also click on any of the pictures to be taken to the corresponding picture in the gallery.  I know I am wasting my breath for all but a few, but if you like these pictures, you should really, really, really go look at them in SmugMug.  Enough said.

So, first up are the Cone Flowers.

Last Fall I read one should leave seed flowers uncut for the Winter.  Apparently, birds would eat the seeds, helping them make it through the the Winter.

At no time this Winter did I see any birds feasting on these plants.  Still, they offered up many photo opportunities.  They were a good contrast to the snow, and I will be leaving them uncut this Fall so that I may once again use them in my photos.

I tend to do long posts, so I offer up a break  . . . of course, it just makes the post even longer, but them’s the breaks.

Next up we have these beauties.  By the way, all of these (except the ones from last year) were shot just before the sun dropped below the horizon.  Some I shot outside, others I brought into the house so I could take multiple shots without them being moved by the wind.  Natural light only, using the D7000, the Nikon 105mm f/2.8 VR Macro lens, and for the blended layer shots, a tripod.

OK, one more break before the run to the finish . . . I did not bother to learn the name of these flowers.  I will, but for now suffice it to say they are the first of all the flowers in my yard showing buds  . . . 

And now, the main attraction . . . 

The following are all Blended Layers composites using 5 to 7 shots each.  Each shot focused on a different part of the dried flower, and then were all blended into a (hopefully) full-focus photograph.  This was then sharpened using the High Pass Filter option in Photoshop.

Each was then treated to different processing in Lightroom.  The sequence will go as follows:  first, the actual Blended Layers shots, then three Black and White processed copies of the same photo, and then one processed like I processed the Maori canoe shots from my PATH 006 post.

There are three different photographs, so fifteen pictures in all.  Not much point me commenting on them, so here they are.

For those who did not go to the SmugMug album, and are wondering what flowers I photographed, they are . . . 

And, that’s it.  I will likely be silent for the next few days as I once again return to the duties and obligations of the real world.

Thanks for dropping by to share in my escape from reality.  I hope you, the gentle reader, enjoyed both my words and pictures.

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. . .  my FP ward  . . . chieken shit.