Cockleburs

[Andy R]

Bobo's second pic in his "Winter Flora" post from a few days ago reminded me of this one I took recently. I'm still a beginner, so C&C is welcome and encouraged. I tried different crops and liked this one the best.

[Andy R]

I've noticed that when I resize using tinypic my images seem to look grainy and not sharp. Can anyone help me with this? My original images are much clearer, but when I try to post them without using tinypic's resize function only about half of the image shows up in the post. Help!

[Andy R]

oops, here's the version I intended to post. Much better, I think.

[Bobobird]

Yes the 2nd version does look better. The plant is sharp and has a reasonably blurred background. Good work.

There is some noise in the background which can be easily cleaned up. Additionally I suggest cloning out the bits of blue sky in the top edge.

[Geoff F]

It's a matter of personal taste but, for me . . .

The main subject is on the 'thirds line' but I find that 'empty' area which covers half of the scene is just distraction. So I would crop with a 4 x 5 ratio to turn that plant into the star of the show. And regard it as being more of a plant portrait shot.

But that is just how I would see the scene.

With regards to uploading. Do all of your resizing, and any final sharpening, with your main editing software. Resize to something suitable, for example 1000 pixels on the longest side then use Tinypics just for uploading.

This should give you better control over your processing than using any of the auto resizing options. If possible, use the Bicubic Interpolation setting.

Have a read of this post.

HELP THREAD: How can I post images here?

[Andy R]

Thanks for the tips, how does this look?

[Geoff F]

That is just about how I would do it, Andy. Some people would move the main stem slightly to one side so it was closer to a third than half way. But I'm happy with it like this.

[Andy R]

Ok, thanks, I'll give it a try.

[zen]

I'm with Geoff on the crop. Looks much better, but I'd still try to get it a bit off center. Nice shot in any case.

[Andy R]

Ok, this should do it for a final draft. Thanks everyone for your input, I appreciate it (I'm learning a ton!)