A millimetre of sharpness

At life-size magnification the depth of field is thinner than the subject. Everything about this shoot is an argument with that fact.

Beating the wind

• Shoot at dawn, before the air moves.
• A windbreak made of two white boards, which doubles as fill.
• A clamp on the stem, never on the flower.

Stacking

Twenty to sixty frames per subject, moved by a motorized rail in 100-micron steps, merged afterward. The merge is where it goes wrong: any frame where the subject moved shows up as a ghosted edge that no amount of retouching hides.

The successful frames all came from the first ninety minutes of each day. After that the garden simply would not stay still.

Eighteen finished plates, each one built from an average of thirty-four exposures.