The specific problem with the edge of the bluff at Point Lobos was getting it in focus, but let’s step back from the edge for a moment. Point Lobos State Reserve is on the California coast about two hours drive south of San Francisco. Point Lobos deserves its proclamation as “the greatest meeting of land and water in the world.” It eases the burden on photographers in one sense, because almost no matter where one points the camera one is likely to get a remarkable picture. However, it raises the bar in terms of measuring up to the splendor presented.

It’s also a good place to escape California’s summer heat. A few days ago in was over 90 inland, while the marine layer kept the Reserve at 64. The lack of sun does take some of the sparkle out of photos, so one has to aim for atmosphere instead. Also, the clouds demand wider apertures, with less depth of focus as a result.

Near Bird Rock the bluffs are profuse with wild flowers. I took three frames to make a vertically spliced panorama. The general idea is to get the distant ocean in focus in the top frame and the flowers in focus in the bottom frame.

Splicing all three images together would produce a mess, because the ocean has changed dramatically between the top two image, and that is on top of the focus problem. My starting point was therefore to splice the top and bottom images in Photoshop Elements™. There is so little overlap that the automatic mode did not work, so I lined them up using interactive mode. The result has out-of-focus flowers near the bluff edge:

The splice was done with reposition only, so the scale of the as yet unused middle image matches the scale of the spliced panorama. I could therefore use the lasso tool to draw an irregular outline around the flowers in the middle image, feather the edge around the outline, copy, and finally paste the flowers into the panorama.

It’s not perfect. As someone has pointed out, drawing with a mouse is like drawing with a potato. A more patient person could have precisely selected the flowers and avoided the fuzzy feathered edges around the selection. that patient person would not be me. I accept the marginal improvement achieved at modest effort.

In case you were wondering, the round white flowers in the foreground are coast buckwheat, the yellow flowers are common woolly sunflower, the red flowers are Monterey Indian paintbrush, and the white stalks near the edge are bluff lettuce. At least I think that’s what they are.