Spring at last: attempts at flowers

[Krawuntzel]

Today there is the first decent day of spring, having a sandwich at the lakeside . So I had to go out and made this attempt at recording the new flowers:

#1 Botanical garden of the University of Zurich



I remember the last decent day of fall when I did this:

#2 Chinese garden Zurich



and then came winter (not my climate; too cold, too dark, too wet, etc.), so I continued flowers indoors:

#3 Greenhouse of the Stadtgärtnerei (city nursery) of Zurich


#4 Greenhouse of the botanical garden of the University of Zürich



But now the flowers are out again:

#5 botanical garden of the University of Zurich


I have no idea of the names of the flowers
C&C always welcome
Erwin

[deetheturk]

Nice captures Erwin, no.3 is my pick of the bunch

[Shadowman]

Nice angles, that first shot looks a bit elongated.

[bnnrcn]

Nice shots,my best is #3 I would clone the orange thing in #4 .

[Geoff F]

For me, Erwin.

#1 is too complex. What is the main subject? The tulips? in which case you need them sharply focused in the foreground with maybe a 4 x 5 ratio crop to remove some of the upper distractions. But there will still be a problem because the foremost tulip is out of focus.

#2 is also quite a complicated scene but it does work OK. I wonder about also cropping this one to 4 x 5 however I do worry about that making the tree seem too 'heavy and stark' if you remove the more delicate branches.

#3 is fine, as previously mentioned by others.

#4 was a very difficult shot to get perfect. Are the reds over saturated? A tighter crop to remove most of that background distraction on the left would help.

#5 also has background problems, although the actual flower is well photographed. I would crop from the top to remove part of the background and have a different size ratio. Then selectively slightly tone down the background brightness and saturation. It was clearly another very difficult scene to photograph.

[IzzieK]

Here are my thoughts...

1 -- there are a bit of softness here that I do not like. The leaves are more sharp than the flowers.
2 -- you could have done this on another angle because any Chinese or Japanese place will have a bridge to accompany that shelter/lookout and water with koi swimming all around the pond. Most of them are red or orange, symbolizing happiness.
3 -- sort of OK...I like red...need a bit cropping to contain it within the frame.
4 -- would be nice if you can remove that orange bit and let the red flower be the star of this show.
5 -- my favourite of this series...the blue here is simply strikingly vivid.

[Krawuntzel]

Thank you all for your comments and some detailed review and suggestions. I will think about it.
Erwin