Pillowy Soft

[ShaneS]

I have been trying to capture the essence of floral subjects for some time and out on a walk this AM I came across this lovely white and purple specimen. The result was this image:



My first inclination was to show the whole flower but it was a very breezy and the darn thing wouldn't stay still. So, I upped by ISO to get a faster shutter speed (I ended up with ISO 200, 1/200 of a second at f5.6) and focused on the stamen.

I am still learning so the softness of this image was a mistake yet a somewhat intentional mistake (I would be lying to say otherwise). I had originally planned on capturing sharpness throughout but equipment (my lens doesn't get much faster) or lack of knowledge prevented me from doing that (should I have upped the ISO more to get that result?). However, I will say that I do like this image and feel like it is stronger that a tack sharp one would be.

What are your thoughts? Do you think the overall image is strong? What about the crop? Any C&C would be appreciated.

[Mike Buckley]

I would like the soft look more if it was more of an abstract presentation. To make it more abstract, you could crop to eliminate the green leaves.

I don't know the ISO capabilities of your camera with regard to noise. Even so, I always consider noise to be the least objectionable of all other criteria. In other words, it doesn't matter if I have prevented noise from being introduced into the image if any of the other criteria, such as sharpness, are not met. So, try taking shots like this at a higher ISO and deal with the noise if indeed that becomes an issue.

Considering that you're in the experimental stage with this style of image, use many shutter speeds (perhaps requiring many ISO values) and many aperture settings until you decide upon what works best for you. The nice thing about using digital cameras is that it costs nothing to use the delete key.

I actually wonder if I would like it more if the image showed a softer look, whether through motion or depth of field.

[ShaneS]

Mike, here is a crop to remove the leaves - thank you for the suggestions. It was a bit of a challenge to keep as much of the image as possible and still remove the leaves but I managed to get this:



This photo was taken while I was doing some sketching with the camera for my new project and proposed February Fest. So much to learn and I plan on doing it in my neighborhood so I can get some exercise too. I sure come home with a lot of images of the same subject but eventually I will figure it out and hopefully get a neat little group of images to share.

[Mike Buckley]

This works much better for me even though it's not a style that I'm enamored with. I see a macro lens in your future.