Robert Schleif  


Blue Thistle  by Robert Schleif

October 2025 - Blue Thistle

About the Image(s)


A bunch of these thistles recently appeared as a table decoration in my retirement facility and I couldn't resist photographing them. An image of a single thistle felt too empty, so I used three. Nothing worked as a background, so I decided to avoid any detail in the background and generated this image along with a variety of others with and without a vase.

As might be expected, this was a focus stack. Because this had to be taken from about six feet rather than two feet has been usual for my flower pictures, the depth of field of each shot was greater than usual, and only 20 images were required to encompass the thistles and their stems. This was processed as usual.


7 comments posted




Ed Ogle   Ed Ogle
Nice Photo and nice composition. There is something magical about 3's in photography. It would have been nice if you had submitted one of the stack images as an original. I would like to see if the green stems have that blueish green color.   Posted: 10/03/2025 17:56:51



Brenda Fishbaugh   Brenda Fishbaugh
Love this image! What a great image for gift cards! I agree with Ed its a bit odd on the stems and maybe on the flower "petals" or "leaves".

But think this is really gorgeous and I'm going to try this sometime!   Posted: 10/04/2025 01:30:51



Sunil Mehta   Sunil Mehta
Very nice, liked the Green and Purple combination...Thanks for sharing.   Posted: 10/04/2025 02:52:03



Jean Wu   Jean Wu
Wow, that's such a lovely photo, just like your other flower shots! The only thing I was thinking is that the bright white background might be a tad too much for the main subject. Maybe a subtle grayish tint could help balance things out?   Posted: 10/04/2025 20:33:13



Robert Schleif   Robert Schleif
Somehow, the stems appear more green here than they were on my computer images or prints. I tried lots of backgrounds for this shot, and I found that detail, even when significantly blurred, interfered with seeing the thistle leaves. I'll try light grey again.   Posted: 10/06/2025 23:02:19



Robert Schleif   Robert Schleif
Here is one of the images from the focus stack. The stems were green in the raw file as well as its conversion to tif, and here, in the jpg.
I tried using a light grey background and this image displays an affect that I have occasionally seen where the physical size of the displayed image or the print affects the way it feels. In this case, with a smaller image, the near white background is good with the leaves feeling sharp and crisp. Making the background grey seems to detract from the leaves' crispness. For a larger rendition, say more than a foot across, the leaves seem to retain their crispness, and the image feels less stark than with a white background.   Posted: 10/06/2025 23:39:01
Comment Image
Jean Wu   Jean Wu
I love this background.   Posted: 10/09/2025 03:25:34



 

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