Emerging maple leaf

[joel quenneville]

This bright red maple leaflet caught my eye while taking pictures this afternoon. Lighting conditions had been quickly deteriorating during the last quarter of an hour and I no longer had any direct sulight. I used the popup flash try to compensate for the lack of light and I opened up the shadows on the left with a reflector. I am not a fan of dark backgrounds, however the contrast in this image has a certain appeal.
Does the dark background add or detract from the image?:confused:

Any input is very appreciated.

1/60s
f/8
ISO 400
Sigma 150mm f/2.8
Nikon D200

[Robert O'Toole]

Hi joel,

The patterns and textures are great on this image and of course the red on black looks good also.

The dark BG works with this image, although I would use curves to darken it to Black, right now its a dark green. Also flash might have been an ok idea but the leaves are way overflashed, the flash was too harsh and created too many specular highlights. Even a sheet of plain copy paper would have really softened the flash.

Robert

[John Cooper]

An interesting and colourful composition joel!!
Agree with Robert re over-flashed appearance. This more often happens with built-in-flash units or flash unit mounted on the camera's hotshoe - the direct, head-on flash is reflected straight back into the lens.
Off camera flash held at an angle (say 45 degrees) will reflect off the subject at the same angle (the old law of light, "The anlgle of incidence equals the angle of reflection). This helps to avoid a lot of the hot spots. Of course there are lots of variables, eg whether the subject is wet or has a multi-facet surface, etc.

[Gus Cobos]

Very nice composition with razor sharp details. I like it the way it is...:cool:

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Joel,
I will echo Robert's and Johns comments and add a question........since you used a reflector..........did this come with a diffuser also???.........if it did..........you could have put it in front of the pop up to block out some of the harshness and evening out the tones..........You may have also been able to dial it down i camera also by adding minus compensation to the flash output........not sure on the D200 (canon shooter)........but I'm guessing it's there.
In short........ha ha........compositionally.....you nailed it........BG.......I like it dark but would work on blending the circular highlights (pretty easy)...............lighting.....needed a little work. As a last thought.........a circular polariser may have helped tone down the highlights......but would have killed your speed even more!