I took a series of photographs of my watchband for focus stacking. I took 200 images, so that I would have focus on every part of the band from the front to the back.
But as I began to put them together, I got the idea that it would be cool to look through the front threads into the stuff in the middle and back, and the above image is the result of following that idea. The foreground threads are so out of focus that you can see the micro-threads behind them.
I didn’t know what to expect, but something tamer than this was on my mind. It’s as if there is an explosion of threadlets in there.
Technical info: I rented a different type of rail for taking the long series of images used in focus stacking. This one also automates the process by triggering the camera shutter, but one can plan out the exposures in different ways and to different degrees of specificity with this one, called StackShot.
The user interface is very old-fashioned, like some DOS program that got ported to Windows without much Windows thinking. But it has a deep, complex interface—I have to refer to the manual often, and I always seem to find puzzles that need to be resolved. I’m undecided if I like the extra features (because of the complexity that comes with it). The WeMacro that I have been using is extremely simple—I run it with an app on my iPhone that is very simple. The StackShot has a hand controller that looks like industrial design from the 90s.
But it works, they both work; I’ll play some more and enjoy the luxury of having to different rails to contrast and compare.
If you are wondering what the photo would look like if I combined all 200 shots, here it is:
I find the image with out of focus threads more interesting, but the more technical presentation of a fully-focused look is not boring. It just doesn’t have any secrets.
I like them both for different reasons. They would hang together nicely on a wall, one barely emerging, the other in sharp focus. The second image has intriguing depth- implying the creative chaos at its origin.