Yosemite Moments #13

Thanks for your very helpful comments and critique on my last post. It's so great to get the feedback to help tweak an image or to learn things that sometimes we just don't see after working on an image for so long - can't see the forest for the trees as they say.

This one is a bit different - tree AND grass! I call this one the Little Charlie Brown tree. The first image of Day 3, again El Capitan Meadow. I was actually wandering around aimlessly for a while in this meadow, nothing was coming to me, I wasn't seeing anything. Preston had found a comp and was working this scene(I hope he doesn't mind.) Kyle was nearby looking too and Youssef was about half the meadow away to the west where he found his current postings. Anyway, I linked to Preston's image to give you some context for this one. I believe my little tree here is just off to the right of Preston's image at the very edge of this stand of what I believe are Yellow Willow, with one tall cottonwood.

This image is actually a 2-image stack for depth of field, or lack of depth, selective focus. One image was at f/22.5, the other image at f/11. f/11 is almost wide open with the LF lens and provided the soft grass I wanted to make the tree stand out. But I got a sharper image of the leaves and branches of the tree at f/22. So, I stacked the two and made the sharper leaves stand out against the softer, shallower depth of field image. But actually, the two slides side by side aren't all that different. The bigger difference really is that this particular lens is much sharper at f/22 and quality drops off - as with most all lenses when at the extreme apertures.

Aside from the technical challenge of blending/stacking two pieces of film, I liked the image of the lonely little tree against the sea of meadow grasses with just a few leaves of autumn. Would love to hear your thoughts and critiques.

Chamonix 4x5, Nikkor 300mm, V100f, f/22@1s, f/11@1/4s

Thanks!
Lon