Canada Post
Canada Post - "Year of the Forests"
Working with photographer Anthony Redpath, we knew the principal challenges in constructing this image that spans from such small foreground details to to such high treetops would concern the edge from the main foreground plate to the background elements, especially as it concerns fine details like foliage, and also getting the focus to match across so many elements over such a large distance.
The latter problem was solved by shooting and combining focus plates. As Anthony prefers his images to be sharp front-to-back, matching the focus was made somewhat easier as they were all to be the same - exactly tack sharp. Where this became more problematic was in the immediate foreground where depth of field is lower - because the small details of foliage were at a lot of different planes, combining the focus plates so as to have no errors required a lot of meticulous, detailed masking work.
Where we were able to expedite the process was the break point between foreground and background, where placing a black backdrop at that point created an easily-maskable edge behind which we could drop the more distant elements.