Not having been to Burns Park in North Little Rock, Arkansas, in several years, I recently made the short drive there to do some photography.
One of the most photogenic features of the park is a covered bridge that crosses the East Fork White Oak Bayou that winds its way through the area. I arrived at the bridge and got some pictures of it, but they felt more obligatory than creative. I wanted something different.
I walked around the area for quite a while trying to find something that sparked my interest. As I was about to give up and go home, I walked past a large rock that had been placed on a horse trail to prevent cars from being driven on the path. Barely giving it a glance, I kept on walking. Suddenly, the proverbial light went on in my mind. I turned around and went back to take another look at this boring rock I had so casually ignored just a few seconds before.
Upon my reexamination, I discovered the face of the rock had two very interesting qualities that would make for a beautiful photograph: interesting colors and incredible textures.
Using my 24-70mm lens, I set up my camera about a foot from the rock. I wanted the rock to fill the frame with nothing else in the image. My biggest consideration was ensuring the entire image was sharp, which meant I had to be very mindful of my depth of field. Even though I was using a relatively short focal length of approximately 40mm, the small distance from the camera to the rock would mean my depth of field would only be a few inches at most, even at f/22.
So, how could I ensure sufficient depth of field?
The answer to this problem was focus stacking. With focus stacking, several shots of the subject are taken at different focus points and then the images are combined in Photoshop to create a photograph that is completely sharp. I had never tried this technique before, but I knew it was the only way to get the picture I wanted.
I made two shots of the rock. One covered points that were a medium distance or closer to the camera, and the second focused on areas that were a medium distance or farther from the camera.
In Lightroom, I adjusted the contrast, vibrance, and saturation to get the look I wanted and then copied those settings to the second file. I then opened the two images in Photoshop using Photoshop’s Load Files into Stack script, selected the options to auto-blend and auto-align, and let Photoshop do its work. The final result is the image you see above.