Flower, Fly and Church

pamelajean (Critique Team)

7

22 Sep 2010 - 3:09 PM

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Hello, Robert. It's good to move out of your comfort zone sometimes. You have nice colour detail on the dahlia and although the hoverfly is not in focus, I think its addition adds something to the image. I therefore don't think you need any advice on photographing flowers or on achieving a nicely blurred background. But I am not sure about shooting the flower against the building/church because I find my eyes going to that building and trying to make out what it is, when the flower should be the eyecatcher. I would prefer to see the dahlia against the lovely blue sky with no other distractions. I have done a modification where I cropped the top in order to remove the vertical lines at the top of the church, then added canvas to the right because I agree with you that the flower is too central. I adjusted highlights/shadows in order to lighten the church and sky. I then adjusted levels so that the flower became more prominent, lighter and brighter. There is a line of dark blue along the right side of the church which I used the clone tool on low opacity to lighten.
Pamela.

Constructive Critique!

DRicherby

4

24 Sep 2010 - 1:18 PM

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The flower is excellent but one of the hoverfly and church needs to go, I think. If you keep the church, you need to find a way of linking it to the flower; if you keep the hoverfly then, since the flower is facing slightly to the right, I think it would be better to have the fly facing to the left and approaching from he other side — an easy edit against the plain sky.

Since the flower is facing slightly to the right, I don't think it works being in the middle of the frame; it would feel more balanced offset to the left.

Constructive Critique!