A touch of beauty (and a pretty good histogram too!)

[JBW]

[Manfred M]

There are two aspects of every photograph that need to come together:

1 The technical side; proper exposure, lack of mechanical "defects" such as missed focus or camera shake; and

2. Good composition.

While these are not quite the classical Taoist Ying and Yang, in order to create a compelling image, these two "forces" must be balanced.


Now that you technical side is coming into line, you might want to consider wrapping your self around the composition side of photography. You might want to start learning about composition and the "rules" of composition. I say that with mixed feelings as there are too many potentially good images that are held back by too much adherence to the rules.

I can't recommend any online videos as I treat composition differently from many photographers, and wouldn't want to lead you astray. I'm sure that some other members can point you to some excellent resources.

[JBW]

There are two aspects of every photograph that need to come together:

1 The technical side; proper exposure, lack of mechanical "defects" such as missed focus or camera shake; and

2. Good composition.

While these are not quite the classical Taoist Ying and Yang, in order to create a compelling image, these two "forces" must be balanced.


Now that you technical side is coming into line, you might want to consider wrapping your self around the composition side of photography. You might want to start learning about composition and the "rules" of composition. I say that with mixed feelings as there are too many potentially good images that are held back by too much adherence to the rules.

I can't recommend any online videos as I treat composition differently from many photographers, and wouldn't want to lead you astray. I'm sure that some other members can point you to some excellent resources.

That I shall. I must need more education that I thought. I thought this was nicely composed. Live and learn!

[Manfred M]

That I shall. I must need more education that I thought. I thought this was nicely composed. Live and learn!

You should look into this. I don't find that this image is really working all that well for me; the leaves along the bottom, the wood beside the flower. It is much easier to create a well composed simple image than one that is complex.

[MrB]

Manfred, I note that you have concentrated on the composition which is, of course, the basis of a photo. But regarding the technical side - is the flower in focus? The petals look a bit soft to me, the sharper part appearing to be the leaves at the top.

Cheers.
Philip

[JBW]

Manfred, I note that you have concentrated on the composition which is, of course, the basis of a photo. But regarding the technical side - is the flower in focus? The petals look a bit soft to me, the sharper part appearing to be the leaves at the top.

Cheers.
Philip

I may have been overreaching but i shot it at F/36 to get as much as I could into focus.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Brian,

A few thoughts from me on what has been mentioned;

But regarding the technical side - is the flower in focus? The petals look a bit soft to me, the sharper part appearing to be the leaves at the top.

The blue/purple of the petals are looking a bit soft, which I think might be due to a combination of factors;

a) The Blue channel (of RGB) forms only a small percentage of luminance, so things that are predominantly blue won't get sharpened very much, especially against darker tones (e.g. the green leaves).
b) It is possible the blue channel went in to clipping (losing texture detail), but I'm not sure
c) It looks like you used some flash to fill - and while this is well balanced with ambient - I wonder if a different angle of illumination might have revealed more texture detail from within the petal. I appreciate this might not be easy if you were reliant on a fixed built-in flash, rather than using a separate flash. When I'm in that situation, I sometimes rotate the camera through 180 degrees, holding it upside down if necessary, to get the light 'in' to where its is needed. I also appreciate that this may not be so easy for you to do though, even I struggle to get to the shutter button sometimes.
d) You (or the camera) may not have achieved focus where you intended, due again to the colour and the lack of luminance contrast, which in turn means the Depth of Field that should be feasible from f/36 has been shifted (further back) than ideal.

With regard to composition, look at it now and ask yourself;

Q1) Does everything in the viewfinder frame contribute to promoting the subject?
Q2) Can I temporarily re-position the subject (and/or the surrounding foliage) for a less cluttered shot?
Q3) Could I physically remove anything that doesn't contribute from the scene before pressing the shutter button?
Q4) Could I crop to exclude anything that doesn't contribute?
Q5) Could I do anything else in Post Processing (PP) to reduce the impact of the remaining things that don't contribute?

My suggested answers:

A1) I suggest not
A2) Could you have used some small thin sticks and or string to angle the blooms better? (e.g. move them away from that large stem?) and/or hold other leaves out of the way?
A3) There's a red stamen (or something) below and behind the blooms that should be removed, or hidden behind the green leaves (if attached to something)
A4) With this capture, I'd lose 30% of image width off the left hand side and probably a little of the right hand edge too
A5) Tone down, blur, clone out (as appropriate) several other things

I hope that lot helps, Dave

[Manfred M]

I may have been overreaching but i shot it at F/36 to get as much as I could into focus.

Ouch. f/36 would be causing some pretty decent softening due to diffraction. Brian - I suggest you look at DoF tables and see what aperture you should be shooting at to keep the key parts of the image sharp. If your aperture gets too small the benefits of DoF might be outweighed by the negative impact of diffraction. That being said, I am not an extreme closeup shooter, so have limited practical knowledge.

As discussed before, if you are having problems seeing / focusing. Shooting tethered will help.

[DanK]

I don't consider myself an expert at composition. One reason I do more macro rather than landscape is that the composition is simpler. However, I think I might be able to offer some basic suggestions.

Brian, the first question in my mind is: what do you want the viewer's eye drawn to? I assume it's the flower in this case. The flower makes up a fairly small part of the frame, so the rest of what is in the frame should somehow help highlight that and draw the viewer's eye to it. It doesn't. On the contrary, many of the other elements in the photo, such as the more brightly toned big stick on the right and the in-focus leaves on the left, compete for attention. And the lines, for example, the vertical sticks on the left, don't draw attention to the flower.

I find flower shots in situ are often very difficult for precisely this reason: they are often in a setting with a great deal of competing detail, some of which is close to the same plane of focus and therefore in focus in the shot. Sometimes you can maneuver yourself around to a position where the distractions are minimized, but I often can't. That's one reason I do most of my flower shots indoors--but that requires cutting the flower, of course.

[JBW]

Hi Brian,

A few thoughts from me on what has been mentioned;

I hope that lot helps, Dave

Not trying to belittle your few thoughts, just trying to save band width.

This will sound like I am sluffing off your thoughts but I'm not. fact is when I look at your (and others) suggestions they all make sense to me. too much in the whole shot is as bad if not worse than too much in the bg.

F/32 may have been a tad high.

Purple is a nasty colour to get right.

I should have taken a vacuum cleaner along to clean things up a bit.

Not sure with my clumsy fingers that tying things up is a real possibility.

I shall do better!