Local Texture

This post contains a few recent Ashland Reservoir photos. Local scenes taken with the attempt to make the ordinary seem a bit extra-ordinary. I titled it local texture, as opposed to local color. That's weak photography humor.

After returning from Zion, and capturing a few silky water shots of the Virgin River, I thought I'd try to duplicate the concept using an extremely tiny stream which feeds the Ashland Res. It is only a minor trickle, perhaps a foot across.

Instead of silky water, I got this:

Water Dance

Even though it was a 1/10 second exposure, the nature of a tiny waterfall is different from a large river. I've no doubt a much longer exposure and perhaps less camera movement would have yielded a different result. The "dance" you see is from the reflections of some of the surface water. The sun was illuminating the falls quite strongly but only on the uppermost surface spray.


Here's a shot of the bottom of the stream:

Watercolor

Green Folds

All shots were taken with my 60mm macro. I focus stacked 8 shots of the green folds plant as I continue experimenting with focus stacking on occasion. Here's the result:

Green at a Distance

While this is technically accurate, and has a lot of the plant in focus regardless of distance from the lens - sort of a "photography feat," I can't help but feel the focus stacking feature, at least in this instance, feels clinical in nature. I much prefer the previous photo. It would appear that having asymmetry and parts of an image out-of-focus aren't bad things in photography :)



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