Stanley & Kaisa Breeden—the new nature photography

Book Preview—Wildflower Country

SiteOwner — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:38:24 +0000

We have just posted a lively preview of our book, filled with focus stacking photography, HDRI and macro panoramas: Wildflower Country. Get thee hence and have a gander.

Macro Focus Stack of Black Bean flowers

SiteOwner — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:40:24 +0000

We have sent off the makings of our next book, Rainforest Country, but photography continues unabated. Beautiful things are all around and we cannot stop ourselves. Black Beans are glorying. You just need to stop and look. These arabesques and bubblings make me think of textile design, and what Florence Broadhurst would have made of it. Or what I may well make of it.

Photography e-Books: Focus Stacking, HDRI, Macro Panoramas

SiteOwner — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 05:07:44 +0000

Want to know how we do it?

I think e-Books featuring the making of an image “from go to woah” would be valuable to a lot of people, with notes on focus stacking, HDR photography and decisions made along the way. For example, the making of a particular focus stacked picture of ours, and how it turned out looking like it did. Like looking over my shoulder as I make an image. We’d price them somewhere in the range of a photography magazine, and it would be a lot more instructive.

It’s certainly something I always wished to see from photographers I admire. If you think this is a good idea, or if there’s anything you’d particularly like to see, let us know in the comments.

For now, our new book Wildflower Country is the best example out ... Read More »

Death to Film Mentality in Digital Photography

SiteOwner — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 02:43:26 +0000

Expose To The Right (ETR) and More

Some digital photographers pride themselves on “getting it right in-camera”: taking a photo that needs little development before printing or some other output. Some say it results in a more “real” photograph, usually accompanied by some bluster implying that any more work than that is introducing artificiality.

This is old film thinking. Digital is a different animal altogether, and it can record detail that a film camera can’t even hope to poke a stick at. So why in God’s name would you ask such a wonderful thing to behave like an old film camera? Unless you’re not interested in exploring new territory… the photographic revolution of digital…

IF you want to make the most of what quality your digital camera can capture, you need to understand how digital sensors behave in recording different tonal ... Read More »

Eric Rolls Prize for Nature Writing

SiteOwner — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 02:34:33 +0000

Very exciting news—we have jointly won the inagural Eric Rolls Prize for Nature Writing!

A quote from the Watermark Literary Society: In announcing the winner of the inaugural Eric Rolls Prize for Natural History Writing, Ian Templeman, chair of the judging panel, was enthusiastic in his praise for the high quality of the entries, the variety of approach and the affectionate understanding for the diversity of Australian landscapes; desert drifts, dark forests, sweeping high country and coastal lake systems, explored by the writers.

The winning entry, Larry comes to Bulurru, a joint entry from Stanley and Kaisa Breeden, is a wonderful story of a love affair with a landscape and the plants and animals that share the territory. The narrator intersperses his text with the voice of his partner and her response to the forest’s speaking. Together ... Read More »

Kings Park Wildflower Country Photography Exhibition

SiteOwner — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 05:06:44 +0000

A large format outdoor exhibition of pictures from Wildflower Country is on in September at the Wildflower Festival in King’s Park, Perth. Get down there and have a look!Outdoor exhibition of Wildflower Country, Kings Park.

Photo courtesy of Steve Parish Wildflower Country exhibit, Kings Park. Photo courtesy of Zoe Fulwood

Wildflower Country Windows

SiteOwner — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:33:47 +0000

The beautiful Boffins Bookshop in Perth created some wonderful window displays celebrating the launch of Wildflower Country!

We ran a competition whereby people purchasing Wildflower Country could enter in the draw to win a limited edition fine art print of our Red Lechenaultia. We are very proud of this print—the detail in that rich red is fantastic.

Window at Boffins Bookshop—featuring fine art print of Red Lechenaultia

Boffins Bookshop owner Lou Pontarolo flanked by happy print winners! Lou is one half of the dynamic duo that is Boffins!

Kaisa’s Focus Stack Workflow, 2009

SiteOwner — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:43:02 +0000

This is actually a reply to a friend that asked about how we achieve the clarity in our photographs and our basic workflow. I thought it would be useful to post it here.

I think the clarity we achieve is down to a combination of anal retentive attention to shooting technique, RAW processing and focus stacking (when appropriate).

I couldn’t resist getting some screen-grabs of my actual working files so I can show you what I’m talking about.

As an example, the Dampiera you mentioned is a focus stack of 7 exposures. I used to use PhotoAcute but now I use Helicon Focus ’cause it has improved a great deal. I did tinker with the super resolution in ‘Acute but I prefer to upsample at the end with ... Read More »

Wildflower Country—Discovering Biodiversity in Australia’s Southwest

SiteOwner — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:40:41 +0000

Our up-and-coming book entitled Wildflower Country—Discovering Biodiversity in Australia’s Southwest is well underway! All of the 166 pictures have been processed and are looking truly wonderful.

Wildflower Country is really a biodiversity story in wildflowers, and a grand opportunity to show off our hard-won skills in digital macro photography as well as the spectacular wave of flowering that occurs in Western Australia’s biodiversity hotspot. Most photographs are comprised of up to 20 exposures to achieve a wondrous depth of field and clarity. As far as we know, this is the first time anything quite like this has been done.

It’s been exciting work and we can’t wait to show it to everyone. Our book will be published in by Fremantle Press in Spring of 2010—synchronistically, the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity. All omens are good.

For more info about this book, please ... Read More »

Photoshop CS4 Focus Stacking continued

SiteOwner — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:13:01 +0000

PS CS4 and PhotoAcute blends compared again

Well, I’ve tried it again. I like that Photoshop doesn’t skew your stacks, but it does have problems with the masking. See the little out-of-focus spots on the beetle’s head and back here:

If I go in and edit the masks, (fiddly, but it’s an essential option to have) I then get this:

And that’s just the beetle. Same problems with the surrounding flowers in the pic. This beetle takes up only a tiny portion of the whole image.

Now I compare this with a blended stack made in PhotoAcute:

That’s the repaired PS image on the left. Photoshop doesn’t skew, but it doesn’t mask better than PhotoAcute. PhotoAcute blends better, but it doesn’t give me a layered, masked file to use in Photoshop.

My verdict? I wish Photoshop ... Read More »