Sotol
To get things started, here's a shot I took in Big Bend, of a Sotol cactus. The image actually consists of 5 shots, all taken at f2.8, but with the focus point moved back through the image for each shot. The backlit sotol spikes glow and when shot out of focus produce round diffuse highlights.
The 5 images are then opened in Adobe Bridge, and the same RAW adjustments are made to all images, to keep the colours consistent. After that, the images are loaded in to Photoshop CS2. Here I stack the images in the order that they were shot - so that the most in focus image is on the bottom of the stack. The opacity of each of the layers is set to give a good balance between each image (i.e., 4 images, opacity at around 25%, 2 images, opacity at 50% and so on). From that starting point I played around with opacity and some blending modes on each layer to get a good final effect (screen and soft light are useful ones to consider).
After that, I flattened and sharpened the image and then desaturated the colours by around 50% to get this final result.
2 comments:
I like it, although I must say that to me it barely "looks like" a multiple exposure. It almost looks like a straight on shot of this plant.
Out of curiosity, why did you desaturate? In my imagination, this plant looks a juicy green.
I've done something somewhat similar, without desaturating - but for this image, it just seemed appropriate, or at least suited my mood.
I prefer the softer, more muted greens that result.
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