I love to travel and that's why this blog is called "the Tripod Traveler". Thanks to my parents and our annual 4 week cross country car camping trips back in the 70's, I have come to appreciate the knowledge that can be acquired when you get out of your house (and out of your comfort zone).
One of these 'learning moments' happened on a trip to Chile in the late 80's. I vividly recall seeing ageing American tourists struggling to keep up on a tour in Punta Arenas. My curiously analytical brain concluded that I didn't want to struggle to enjoy my travels because of age or health. In that moment, my future travel strategy was born! Now, I strive to enjoy the places that I really want to experience sooner rather than later.
At the age of 61, I am in excellent health and proudly rode my bike to the hospital for a visit to my Cardiologist a few days ago. I do, however, realize that I may tire of travelling at some point in my life and want to prepare for that possibility. One of my solutions lies a mere 10 minute walk from home in my local Botanical Garden - El JardÃn Botánico de la Universidad de Valencia.
As a photographer, botanic gardens are a treasure trove of potential compositions. You can shoot 'Street' and capture images of the visitors, search for landscape-esque shots, bird and insect shots, flower and leaf shots or macro photography. My current personal favorite is macro photography utilizing a technique called photo stacking and here's how that happened. When I first used my macro lens I was really excited to be able to explore the world in greater detail but I was a bit surprised about the very small depth of field achieved even at f/22. After a little research, I discovered something called photo stacking.
Photo stacking is where you take multiple images using different focal planes and then stack all the images on top of each other to create a hyper-focused, detail-saturated close-up image of your subject. The process of photo stacking is a little tricky at first and does take some time to learn but once you get the hang of it - a whole new world becomes unlocked! Photo stacking involves combining anywhere from a few images to over 100 by transferring them from Lightroom into Photoshop and following the correct procedure. For me, it's like cooking a world-class lasagna. The recipe is complicated and there are many ingredients but when you sit down to eat, it's all SO worthwhile.
That's it for the technical stuff, checkout a few examples of some photo stacked images below.
IMPORTANT - enlarge the images and look for the fine details!
To keep things interesting, I try and mix it up a bit and not photo stack everything while in the botanic garden because sometimes I use depth of field to highlight the things that I want to stand out.
My message is that you don't always have to hop on a plane and fly several hours to immerse yourself in the beauty of nature. Sustainable Wanderlust can be found a short walk from your home if you look hard enough. Thankfully, I always find myself at peace in nature which is probably one of the reasons why I am a nature photographer. On the other hand, I also enjoy the vast array of cool things that a city offers which is one of the reasons I live in a medium-sized city like Valencia. In life, it is all about balance.
Below find more images from the botanical garden that are not photo stacked but single images.
IMPORTANT - enlarge the images and look for the fine details!
When I first began trying to try photo stacking, I was walking up a street in Toulon, France and spotted a nice little ledge on which the sun was shining and an idea popped into my head. I wanted to experiment with my new technique and took various groups of images of the the same composition so I could compare and contrast the results. Science! The experiment positioned a 2 euro coin on the sunny little ledge and shot 4 groups of images using different combinations of settings.
Finally, I leave you with an image of a 2 euro coin minted in Germany. If it wasn't for my little experiment, I never would have noticed the word "Freiheit" engraved on the side of the coin (see below). In German, Freiheit means both "Liberty" and "Political Freedom" which are two very important things in this world. Especially now.
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