Focus Stacking – Real Artists Ship
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Real Artists Ship Photography Blog By Neal Grosskopf

Technique: Focus Stacking

Neal Grosskopf

Au Train Falls, Upper Michigan

Before & After

This particular shot is one of my favorites I’ve ever taken mostly because of the way the processing of it turned out (I feel it looks most like the photographer’s photos who I admire), but I also think I got the angle/composition of it pretty good.

Location

Taken at Au Train Falls in Upper Michigan which are only a short drive from Munising, MI. I was staying up here for a fall colors trip and on my way home stopped at Au Train Falls. The falls have a dam behind them that regulates the amount of water that will be going over the falls so it may vary depending on the time of the year. To access them you pull off on to a gravel and drive a short distance down a hill. It isn’t necessarily a park but you are allowed to visit them. I would recommend bring some rubber boots along if you visit as it opens up the possibilities for different angles of shots you can get if you’re able to walk around in the shallow water.

Composition

When I arrived there were a few other people walking around near the falls. Since I had my rubber boots with me, I headed into the shallow water and scouted out compositions. The sun was starting to get low in the sky so I had to find angles where the sun didn’t create too much of a reflection in the water. I had my circular polarizer with me to deal with that as well. The cool thing about Au Train Falls is they are these very long and wide falls and if you moved 5 feet in any direction it totally changes the photo. There’s so many great photos to get here. It’s really one of the most photogenic waterfalls I’ve shot at and I will post a few more photos from the trip here later.

I took this shot towards the end of my shoot as it was one of the few angles left that the sun wasn’t overpowering. I got down real low and put a couple leaves in front of my lens for a foreground element. Then I turned my camera at an angle to lead the water into the frame. Then, I took 3 bracketed shots at -2ev, 0ev & +2ev. I also took another set like this with the focus set on the foreground so I could focus stack it later.

EXIF Information

    Post Processing

    As you can see in the before and after, this photo is heavily post-processed. It’s been awhile since I last processed it, but I believe I started in Lightroom, then exported for Aurora HDR. After that brought it back to Lightroom and sent it to Photoshop where I did most of the edits. Then, I wrapped it up in Luminar. I also used Raya Pro to add an orton effect. One of the few things I use Raya Pro for now.

    Software Used

    Aurora HDR
    Lightroom
    Luminar
    Photoshop
    Raya Pro

    Techniques Used

    Focus Stacking
    High-Dynamic-Range

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    Neal Grosskopf

    Mobius Arch – Alabama Hills, California

    Before & After

    I was fortunate during my visit to the Alabama Hills that the Milky Way lined up nicely inside Mobius Arch. As I was scouting it out during sunset I held my phone with the Photopills app up to the arch and was surprised that it would line up just after sunset that night. I ended up waiting there another two hours until it got dark just in case other photographers showed up. Unlike many of my other shots, this particular one I created a video editing series on how I made it step by step. Check that out here on Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnX9sc0AAw&index=1&list=PLUZk6cRYiDTOuQRFlKHvU-MN3v-HiO1UJ

    Location

    Mobius arch is located in the Alabama Hills region of California near Lone Pine. The park has been used as the movie set for many Hollywood movies due to its unique features and only being 3-4 hours from Los Angeles. Getting to the arch is pretty easy, in fact its exact location can be found on Google Maps. Once you get to the parking lot, take a left and follow a trail for roughly 100 yards and it’ll lead straight to the arch. At first you’ll see the backside of it opposite of what you see in my picture. Head down a hill and you can see this vantage point of it. During you visit make sure to check out all of the other arches at the park. I like to think of the Alabama Hills as sort of a mini Arches National Park minus all the crowds of people.

    Composition

    Like I mentioned early, I knew I wanted to shoot this arch, but I had no idea the Milky Way would line up with it so nicely.  Most of the pictures I’ve seen of it online, the Milky Way is either to the left or right, but I haven’t seen any so far where it’s inside the arch which was something I was excited about. I visited it in mid September in case anyone else is trying to get a similar shot.

    For this shot, I got down low, below the arch and aimed my camera upwards. Perhaps the easiest way to see the scene as I did – is to check out my 360 photo I took below.

    360 Image - Mobius Arch - Alabama Hills, CA;

    For this shot I used two LED light panels to light the scene. One set off to the right which you can see in the 360 photo and another laying on its back inside the arch. For both LED panels I wrapped them in a white t-shirt and lowered their intensity to its lowest setting. After that I fired off 5 shots focused on the sky and 3 more focused on the arch which I could user later to focus stack.

    EXIF Information

      Post Processing

      This shot, like all of my Milky Way shots required a lot of post-processing. I would estimate it took me between 6-8 hours. I edited it as a series of many other photos so as I got going, it started to go quicker. Unlike most of my other photos, I created an 8 video series of how I created this which you can check out on Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnX9sc0AAw&index=1&list=PLUZk6cRYiDTOuQRFlKHvU-MN3v-HiO1UJ

      1. Starting out, I created a neutral white balance in Lightroom
      2. I then did manual exposure blending Photoshop
      3. After that I did focus stacking
      4. Then, created a smart object for the ground and sky and editing in Adobe Camera Raw
      5. From there I removed color noise
      6. Added a high pass filter to the stars
      7. Removed chromatic aberations form the stars
      8. Cleaned up fringing
      9. Added adjustment layers such as levels, saturation, color balance & exposure

      Overall, it’s a photo that I’m really proud of, and happy I ha to chance to shot this iconic location.

      Software Used

      Lightroom
      Photoshop

      Techniques Used

      Exposure Stacking
      Focus Stacking

      Have a Question?

      Neal Grosskopf

      The Trona Pinnacles

      Before & After

      While I’m not from California, the Trona Pinnacles seem like a very popular location for night sky photographers in the area. I was lucky to be able to visit them (and the Alabama hills) during my trip out to LA last fall and I’ve finally finished culling and processing my 1,500 photos from the trip. Here’s one of my favorite compositions from that outing.

      Location

      The Trona Pinnacles are located in the middle of nowhere and were a 2-3 hour drive from my hotel at Joshua Tree National Park. I did a day trip up to Alabama Hills the day before and stopped by the Trona Pinnacles during midday to familiarize myself with the area. It was a scorching 100 degrees out in September and there wasn’t any shade to hide from the sun.

      Probably the worst part about visiting the Trona Pinnacles is the gravel road leading in to them. It’s about a 30 minute drive (if you’re driving safely) down a bumpy pothole ridden road. It was even worse leaving at night when it was dark as I was afraid I’d not see a pothole in time and get stuck. Fortunately I had driven the road 3 times before that during my scouting and the 2nd drive in.

      Once at them, you’ll see the large pillars of rock rising up offering almost unlimited compositions. There is one field of pillars about 200 yards from the bathrooms which is where I decided I wanted to take my photos. I also drove around the loop to pick out some secondary compositions in case there were other photographers in my area. I then came back the next day with my wife during sunset to get some pictures while she read a book in the car for the next couple hours (I love my wife!)

      Composition

      Having scouted the area out during daylight, I immediately knew where I wanted to shoot so I tried to strategically park the car in the spot so nobody would drive up to the area and mess up a photo. I was constantly paranoid about other photographers showing up seeing as it’s a popular place. I find nighttime photography to be extremely difficult when other people are around!

      Despite my worries I only saw 2-3 cars pull in during the nighttime and we all respected one another. In fact one women went out of her way to not accidentally shine lights in my area the entire time. As I was leaving I thanked her letting her know, that she’s probably my favorite photographer I’ve ever shot with (lol) and I never even talked to her!

      Back to this photo – as I was wrapping up sunset I started picking out some shots with foreground subjects. I found a lot of rocks about this size so I positioned that in my shot. The wind started to really pick up, perhaps 20 mph and it was blowing sand around like crazy. Because of this I had to leave my one lens on for the entire shoot which is something I don’t usually do. I also wrapped the entire lens mount in a t-shirt to further try to protect it as I was having flashbacks of going to the beach and getting sand in my gear and it never coming out again.

      I then recalled this composition from earlier and got it setup. I also setup my LED light and had to move it several times to get the lighting how I wanted it. As you can see in the before photo, I really didn’t get it right and had to mostly post-process the light into the photo.

      I then fired off a series of shots focused on the foreground and another 5 shots focuses on the stars so I could focus stack these later.

      EXIF Information

        Post Processing

        Like a lot of my night sky photos lately, these took a long time to process. I would estimate each of the four photos in this series took 5 hours each. The later ones were less time as I got into the flow of things. It starts in Lightroom by getting the white balance correct. Then I exposure stacked them manually in Photoshop. After I blended the focus stacked images together. Next, I created a smart object for the ground and another for the sky and made some tweaks to those. After that I removed color noise from the ground and then remove star color using the color blend mode and a gaussian blur. After that I did a lot of defringing on the photo and finally made my mask for the sky and the ground.

        I also tried a new technique for this series of photos by using something called star minimization. This seems counter intuitive as it removes stars or makes them less bright, but it gives more emphasis to the Milky Way as its gets crowed with stars.

        The nice thing with these desert shots is there’s no trees to have to mask around. The western photographers in the US have it really easy as they only have to mask around rocks. Us east of the Mississippi photographers have to deal with that pain in most of our shots!

        Finally, I adjusted the photo with probably 30+ adjustment layers such as color balance, levels, exposure, saturation and hue and saturation.

        Thanks for reading!

        Software Used

        Lightroom
        Photoshop
        Raya Pro

        Techniques Used

        Exposure Stacking
        Focus Stacking

        Have a Question?

        Neal Grosskopf

        Cana Island Lighthouse, Door County, WI – Star Trails

        Before & After

        One of my favorite places to take pictures is at the Cana Island lighthouse in Door County, WI and my favorite time to shoot there is at night when the stars are out.

        Due to it’s low population, Door County offers a unique chance to clearly see the stars without so much of the light pollution that they rest of the state has is it is conveinently close to bigger cities such as Green Bay and Appleton. Because of this I try to go up there several times a year to get some night time pictures.

        I recently purchased a new tripod with an additional arm on it that allows me to attach a phone to the tripod. This allows me to use the phone as a time lapse timer and take 100s of photos over the course of the night. With this ability, I can create time lapse images and also do star trail photos such as the one here.

        Location

        This photo was taken at the Cana Island Lighthouse near Baily’s Harbor in Door County, WI. I was up in Door County for the evening taking pictures for work so I decided to stop here on the way home since it was a clear night out. I didn’t run into any other photographers while here which was nice. The land bridge out to the island was covered in snow and ice so I didn’t get my feet wet heading out there either.

        Composition

        I just learned how to do star trail photos so the first thing to do is find the north star also known as Polaris. The best way to find this is to find the Big Dipper, then from the end of that constellation, it points towards the north star. Once you find that, you need to line it up with something interesting which in this case I used the lighthouse. The North Star is helpful as all other stars in that area of the sky rotate around it giving it this cool look. Originally I wanted to line the top of the lighthouse with this star, but I ran out of room to do so as there was a tree near me so I opted for this composition.

        For this photo I took 100 exposures at a 25 second shutter speed with my Sigma 14mm f1.8 lens I just picked up this fall. I let it run for about an hour.

        EXIF Information

          Post Processing

          The nice thing with star trail photos I’m finding is they take a little less work for post processing than my normal Milky Way photo workflow. Those photos tend to take between 4-8 hours while these was closer to 4 hours. The hardest part I’m finding is making good selections in Photoshop. I’ve just started doing more Photoshop-only editing and am still figuring out how best to do things in there.

          To start with this photo, I imported all the photos to Lightroom, exported them to Photoshop, stacked them on top of one another and then set their layer blending mode to ‘lighten’. This will magically make the light trail effect happen, it’s really that easy!

          After that I started making selections between the sky, ground and lighthouse which was the hard part. After that I did a lot of tweaks to those regions of the photo with contrast, white balance and saturation.

          Software Used

          Lightroom
          Photoshop
          Raya Pro

          Techniques Used

          Exposure Stacking
          Focus Stacking

          Have a Question?