The Camerazzi Community

Where shutterbugs unite to share their wisdom, skills and resources

Spring flower

i am re-submitting this photo as i made it too small the first time round. i have been reading a very good photographic book and i started with some flower photography. i would love to receive some comments on my first attempt at flower photography

9 Opinions have been expressed on “Spring flower”. What is your opinion?

  1. Kieta Weyer commented:
    28 September 2010 at 7:17 am

    Hi Suzie

    You asked for comments…..
    The flower is not sharp enough and disappears in the photo.
    You need an change in your DOF setting and some cropping, to show only the flower and not all the background and the big leaf in front, which distracts the eye from the flower.

    I’ll say, crop the big leaf away, crop the top and sides and see what it looks like!

  2. Pikkie commented:
    28 September 2010 at 9:39 am

    HI Suzie and welcome to the site if I haven’t said it yet here.
    I like the diagonal composition and positioning of the focal point!
    Kieta is right about the flower not being sharp. Sharpness is not always essential, but for close-up flowers it mostly is unless you want to vreate a very specific soft and hazy mood. I don’t know what caused the softness – your shutter speed (1/800)was fast enough to rule out camera shake or subject movement your f-stop (f5.6) is good enough for sharpness on the whole flower. It could be a setting on the 400D – check that your focus setting is A1-single and not servo. You could also use your post-processing software to sharpen like I did below.
    I also agree that the leaf is more distracting than contributing to the photo – with single flowers go for simplicty and try to eliminate b/g as far as possible. The blur on the b/g (shallow DOF) is good, but an even colour would have been better. Depending on your software skills. much of these probs can be addressed in post=processing as well, though my rule still is that one should strive for perfection on camera fisrt! Since I could not retake the pic, I had to revert to pp to illustrate the effect of a sharper photo and a more evenly darker coloured background.

    • Suzie du Plessis commented:
      28 September 2010 at 6:32 pm

      thanks pikkie. i appreciate the comments and i will re-try shortly taking the photo again using info from all the wonderful comments. this is very helpful and i am glad i have joined this group

  3. Henriette commented:
    28 September 2010 at 9:52 am

    That’s right Pikkie, “strive for perfection with the camera, but Kieta and Pikkie I agree with you. Less is more

  4. Kieta commented:
    28 September 2010 at 10:53 am

    Sorry Suzie, I mentioned DOF (depth of field) without explaining.
    Have a look on Google for some interesting and cute examples.
    Macro also works well with flowers.

  5. Ben Broughton commented:
    28 September 2010 at 10:53 am

    I lokked at this image along time before venturing an opinion. It depends what you want to show with your image. The flower only or the whole plant. I do agree with simplicity. I would not crop this image (could loose the strong diagonal comosition) but would sharpen.