alan frost photography

A return to the Beech Avenue

By alan frost on November 24, 2021

It has been four years since I last visited this location – The Beech Avenue at Kingston Lacy in Dorset. On that occasion it was early morning. Some mist and autumn colour enhanced the splendour of the view and I came away with one of my favourite colour images from a time when I was mainly working in black and white. (See below).

I returned earlier this week, this time after lunch and hoping I hadn’t missed the glorious yellow and russet coloured leaves. Unfortunately I was at least a week too late. Most of the leaves had fallen to the ground and the trees were nearly bare, but I was treated to some glorious late afternoon light. It was exceptional and I found a number of pleasing compositions. In fact the more I looked the more I felt this location has so much potential, and not just at this time of year, so I know it will not be long before I head back there.

As I was using a telephoto lens, I was unable to get all the trees in focus, even with a small aperture opening of f14. For the above composition I wanted a sharp image from front to back, so for the very first time I decided I would focus stack three images and merge them in Photoshop. I focused on the near trees for the first exposure, then the middle group for the second frame, and finally the distant branches in the background. I was surprised how easy the process was in Photoshop. However along the way I discovered that before merging the three exposures, it was better to process one of the RAW files in Capture One, copy those changes to the other two, and after that process was complete take them into Photoshop. I could then make any final adjustments on the TIFF file.

Below is another image from the same visit.

And finally a portrait of some of the trees which were still partially clothed with autumn leaves.

As well as capturing the line of trees, there are I believe endless opportunities for some more abstract compositions. A return visit to the Beech Avenue is already being planned.