I have tried something like that before and absolutely hated it. But for your sake, I hope it catches on.

All through grad school, my running joke was that “Teen Talk” Barbie did nothing wrong. Math class IS tough. 😭

Depends how many holes you have in your socks. :)

Or whether your coffee cup has a handle.

You got it! You’re welcome, I am still learning a lot myself. 😄

Edit: I may be a little confused about what you mean when you say narrower aperture. When you focus stack, you will be using a relatively wide® aperture, if you are not, you will need a somewhat narrow(er) aperture to get sharper focus.

Focus stacking is usually done in post. The option in your camera will most likely just take a series of photos with the focal point changing slightly every time, and you can stitch those together later. Photoshop will do it automatically, or you can do it yourself with masking on different layers.

There are some cameras that will do the stitching for you. I know the OM-1 (the camera I generally use) does this, and probably other models. I tend not to use it though since it saves the end result as a jpg and I prefer to process my own images from RAW.

I am in the same boat, not a pro, so my explanation may not be the best:

It’s more to do with the fact that when you are taking macro shots you are generally very close to your subject, and unless it is a very thin object on a single plane parallel to your lens, you often really have to stop down to get the entire subject in focus (like f/8 - f/11). If you are shooting at f/2.8 you might only get a single petal on your flower in focus.

So if you see a shot of a small object with some depth to it, which is entirely in sharp focus, but then you have a super creamy bokeh on objects that are only a couple inches further away, there is a good chance that it was achieved using a wider aperture and stacking the in-focus bits of several shots. That’s what I look for, anyway.

Hope that helps. B&H has good articles on DOF in macro photography and focus stacking that explain it better than I can!

When you have a really shallow depth of field on a macro shot, yet your entire foreground subject is tack sharp, it is often achieved by focus stacking. Otherwise, it can be quite difficult to blow out the background while having your entire subject in focus (even though it is quite small). I have done it with flowers before, so I think I am just used to the look. It has a sort of isolated, dreamy quality.

It is also great to take makeup off or products that build up (like sunscreen).

I’ve seen hairspray used on a clear filter to create a similar bloom effect!

Only if it contains no complex entries.

Very well done!

Beautiful! Are you using focus stacking here?

To be fair, I’ve written plenty of useful code as a hobbyist with the help of Chat GPT. Not good for writing anything factual or creative, but it’s a decent assistant at my level.

That was how all image macros looked in back my day, and we liked it!

There are nowhere near enough demotivational posters being dug up from back in the day.

Yes! This stuff certainly raises a ton of questions. I know some, maybe all, of it is probably random “noise” but I’ve always wondered if peripheral states of consciousness let us perceive things that are "real’ (somewhere out there). That’s the great mystery I want to see unraveled in my lifetime.

I have a lot of dream related phenomena that I experience regularly (sleep paralysis, out of body experiences, etc.) but I generally chalk that up to the fact that I probably have some kind of sleep disorder.

But there was one dream I had that I cannot easily dismiss. A few years ago, my grandfather was living alone and declining in health. He and I were extremely close when I was growing up. We (my mom particularly) would go check up on him during the week, and he had home health aids that checked in as well.

One night, I had an unusually vivid dream where I saw him - in blue robes, in a heaven-like setting, happy and healthy and strong. When I woke up, I made sure to journal the dream, as I keep track of significant dreams. Just a few minutes after I finished writing, my mom calls me and tells me that my grandfather’s health aid had showed up and found him lying on the floor; they had thought he had a fall during the night. They sent him to the hospital, but he wasn’t really coherent and was pretty obviously reaching the end.

I visited him as soon as I could and said my goodbyes, and he died the next day. I felt like the dream gave me some sort of closure, like his spirit reached out to me and let me know that he was ready to move on?

I actually had a few dreams after that where he visited me, but we both knew he had died and couldn’t stay. I at least got to share the news with him that I was expecting a child (I found out I was pregnant about 4 months after he died). I have not seen him in a dream since.

Perhaps it was a hypnopompic hallucination? I ask because I have many experiences waking up from nightmares and hearing bizarre sounds or seeing bizarre things. Like ice cream truck sounds outside at 3am. Or seeing the face of an “alien” standing next to my bed.

Hopefully your experience was just a trick of the mind!

Thanks! I’ll check it out. Still figuring everything out. I’m not sure I know how to cross post here yet - unless it’s literally just posting the same image again?