All Lit Up

[Julie Kenward]

I made this image tonight in the early evening hours. The sun was off to the side, lighting up the petals of this potted daisy and turning them a shimmering gold. This is practically the SOOC image - I tweaked levels a tiny bit and applied a slight crop / sharpen in CS3.

Canon 40D, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM
ISO 100; f8 @ 1/160th
Eval Metering; AWB
Handheld, natural lighting

[Fabs Forns]

Very dramatic as presented, Julie. I'm a fan of shallow depth of field, but since the petals in focus are folded, maybe a little more DOF could have made it better.

[Ed Vatza]

Hi Julie,

I like the way the stem brings the flower into the frame but I will say that there feels like too much stem here and it is pushing the flower out of the frame. So I would like to see a little less stem and a bit more room for the flower to be looking into. DOF is a tough one. I like the look f/8 is giving you here. But then the choice is whether to focus on the near petals or the far. I think most would say the near although I am contrarian enough to think focus on the far petals could be interesting. ;)

[Mike Moats]

Hey Julie, I like the image and like fabs I'm a fan of shallow DOF even though most of my image are shot at max DOF. I like the shallow DOF on this one, with the details on the front petals, For me this would work better as a vertical as you nomally think of a flower as growing straight up rather then sideways, but thats just a mental block for me.

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Julie, I like your image but also agree with Ed about cropping some of the stem out...:cool:

[Mike Gallo]

I like the dark bg, comp works for me but perhaps a little more room to the right

[Nonda Surratt]

I like the DOF Julie and the light, neat! Rather agree with the too much stem.