Little Egypt Geologic Area: Focus Stacking

The Queen in Little Egypt Geologic area

Little Egypt landscape photography:
Rain drizzled for 24 hours straight before my arrival at Little Egypt.  Clouds hung low.  I went here instead of searching for trickling waterfalls in Capitol Reef.  Laurent rates this place as less interesting than nearby Goblin Valley but the more colorful formations here appealed to me.  Many of the goblins here have a unique white stripe of rock running horizontal through them. 

The most interesting formations were photographed from a distance using a telephoto lens.  With a focal length of 50-105mm, the plane of focus becomes small even with apertures of f/16.  Focus stacking is a technique to deal with this.  On site, I took 3 photographs of the foreground flowers, the midground bush, and the Queen rock formation.  These must have the same aperture and shutter speed.  They must align perfectly so a tripod is required.  They must be identical except for their focal point.

Back at home, the 3 shots are processed the same in Lightroom.  I then stack the 3 images in Photoshop as layers and manually blend the 3 to create an image that is sharply in focus from front to back.  Besides the main photo of the Queen I am including a few other examples of images created this way.

Flowers beneath the Towers of Little Egypt

Bleached bush and Little Egypt Landscape:  this photo was taken at 80mm
focal length and would be impossible to keep sharp without focus stacking.

Lastly a trip for navigation from GoogleMaps on your phone:  DON'T get off if google tells you to drive on this rough dirt path that looks like only two tire tracks in the desert.  Google had me do this and you end up going through a deep steep wash that is only for 4x4.  It eventually links up with a completely smooth gravel graded path that is the correct road that begins further south than google's initial road recommendation.