Day 14 - Iris

This shot proved particularly tricky to process in post-ed. This is because I've chosen to work with a very narrow depth of field in this challenge and needless to say, I've been doing a bit of focus stacking on the larger subjects. Anyway, since I don't shoot in "controlled conditions" I do my focus stacking by hand. That is, I shoot several shots and select parts of them by hand and blend them together using different layers. It's usually quite simple, but the shape of the flower in combination with the windy day today made the process more lengthy and complicated than usual. It was a bit of a pain, and I'll admit that normally I wouldn't attempt in on a day like this, but I finally found a fresh Iris blossom that was isolated from the others, so I really wanted to do this shot. I ended up using three "focus layers" and twisted and prodded them until they matched up. I also had to match the backgrounds, since the wind moved stuff there as well, so I ended up cloning a bit and using the eraser to get it as close to the real thing as I could. I finally think I got it :)

/MrsHjort