robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Flowers both open and unopened of the "tropical milkweed" are currently part of nature in my backyard.

I had a couple of pots with these two years ago. Seeds blew and are now in several other pots with other plants, two spots growing from between concrete slabs where a little dirt is showing and in my flower beds. One came up under a fairly large rose bush and the stalks went straight up so you look at the rose bush (sadly in need of trimming back to start new growth) and here and there sticking out of the leaves and roses are little clumps of milkweed flowers.

This is actually a two frame focus stack. I almost always take two or three frames of flowers, esp when a breeze is moving them around. The two frames both had the unopened red blooms in the middle in focus but one had the cluster on the right sharp, the other had the cluster on the left sharp. Just to see what happened I sent them from LR to PS as layers. Then I did a layer alignment and a focus blend plus crop. This is the result.
5DIV, 100 f/2.8 Macro, 1/200 @ f/8, ISO-400
hand held, center AF point, spot meter, with a Macro Ring Flash.

Yes, I needed a third frame for the front flower on the right.

(Download)

MFTVGirl Loc: Baltimore, MD

Beautiful flowers and capture. Great work with the focus stacking!

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

thanks a lot