Quail Creek State Park is very close to where we live. It’s a small but popular park for fishing, boating, kayaking, and hiking.
Quail Creek reservoir was completed in 1985 to provide irrigation and culinary water to the St. George area. Most of the water in the reservoir does not come from Quail Creek but is diverted from the Virgin River and transported through a buried pipeline.
Two dams form the reservoir. The main dam is an earth-fill embankment dam. The south dam is a roller compacted concrete dam, constructed to replace the original earth-fill dam that failed in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1989.
The maximum depth of Quail Creek can reach 120 feet, so it is cold enough to sustain the stocked rainbow trout, bullhead catfish, and crappie. Largemouth bass, which is also stocked, and bluegill thrive in the warmer, upper layers of the reservoir.
Tiger Lilies put on a long show in July and early August in my garden every year. They are not deer resistant. If I did not spray these flowers, I would not have any.
Feature Image Details
I made these images following an afternoon rain. For this type of image to work, you need deal calm and I do mean dead calm, not just for a second but for minutes.
This is a fixed focal length macro lens. It’s an excellent lens for butterflies and small insects.
That’s a blend of 10 different images, each focused on a different rain drop or portion of the stem. Even with the varying focus spots the background is out of focus. That adds to the image, I wanted the key elements to be in focus and the rest not.
For comparison purposes, here is one of the frames, un-stacked.
Single Image – Not Focus Stacked
The detail on the leaf at the right is missing and only one of the drops is in focus. Helicon focus did superb on this set, better and faster than I could do myself. For that I can thank the calm wind.
I did not want the background to be in focus, just the raindrops and foreground leaves.
Depth of Field
Depth of field on close-up images is extremely shallow. The only way to get a completely sharp image is to focus stack.
Helicon Focus works best with stationary objects. Mountains don’t move but flowers do.
I took this set of images on a very calm day with little wind.
See links number 2 and 6 below for a focus-stacked Green Tree Frog and focus-stacked coneflowers.
