Into the heart of a flower

fificat100 (e2 Member)

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4 May 2012 - 6:33 PM

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Charming delicate image. Well presented.

Lavina

SueEley (e2 Member)

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4 May 2012 - 6:55 PM

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Did a mod. I think that this kind of crop, or a really central one, looking down on the flower, can work. If you look down on the face of a flower, you can sometimes get more in focus. You could also use a smaller aperture. Another option which can produce great shots, is to reduce your depth of field to the minimum and then focus on a critical detail. You get a load that don't work, then the odd one that wows you

Trev_B (e2 Member)

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4 May 2012 - 10:53 PM

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Hi Mark, sorry to hear about you leg. As Ronnie says Sue has addressed the composition of this image,

I feel the image could be sharper and you have areas of petals blown. It is worthwhile remembering that with macro's you need smaller apertures than other lenses to get a deeper depth of field. I would have used f16 for this shot... unless you were aiming for the narrow DOF.

I do like the presentation with the frame.

Trev

DRicherby

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5 May 2012 - 11:51 AM

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So sorry to hear about your leg!

The advice above is good: a narrower aperture to get the whole of the flower's centre sharp (start somewhere around f/16 and see if that's enough); the centre of the flower would probably look better on the intersection of thirds and cleaning up the little specks would remove distractions.

Your exposure is kind of in-between the two main approaches and I don't think that really works because it looks like a mistake rather than a deliberate decision. The natural approach is to make sure nothing's blown out, which will probably give a somewhat dark-looking photograph which will need a curves adjustment to brighten things up. The alternative is a high-key shot, where most of the highlights are blown out to white but, at least around the centre, the boundaries of the petals are still visible.

The over-exposure here is beyond recovery from the RAW file. RAW files are great for recording detail in the bright tones and the shadows, which can be recovered by something like a curves adjustment. But once something's blown to pure white, it's blown and there's nothing you can do to get it back. Watch the histogram while you're shooting and make sure it doesn't bunch up at either side unless you're deliberately shooting high/low-key.

Dave.