Yellow Lady Slipper

[James Parker]

I took this in a botanical garden near New Hope, Penna

D2X
1/250s
F/22
100 ISO
60mm Macro
Dual Flash

[Steve Foss]

I like this as an environmental image, James. The comp is nice, and there's some open space in the direction the sepals pull my eye. They are acting like arms held out wide in welcome.

Also, nice job on killing the hot spots on the flower sac. The yellow ladyslipper is waxy and reflects even subtle light. I generally underexpose a bit and use a diffusion disc even on cloudy days and still have to do a bit of cloning if I want those hot spots out of there.

Flash looks just a little hot to me.

[Ed Vatza]

Bowman's I presume? I've got to get there one of these days. So close and yet so far.

The actual flower looks pretty good to me. However, I do find all the leaves to be distracting personally but there's not much you can do about it. Did you try any images opened up at f/5.6 or f/4 or so? If so did it blur the background at all without degrading the flower image? Just curious.

[James Parker]

ED, I did not try opening up, the dual flash set up I have is for the hasselblad and I have converted it to the Nikon but it is not automatic now so in close ups I have to use a smaller F stop. Since the flower is so wide I suspect a more open f stop would not have given me as much DOF. Thanks for comenting Jim

[Mike Moats]

Hey James, this is just a really tough shot. On one hand you shoot with alot of DOF to bring the flower all in focus and you also get the leaves which is a nice field guide shot, and to get a more artistic flora shot you need shallower DOF to help soften the BG and then you lose the details in the flower. You did a nice job with a tough subject.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi James,
Definitely a tough subject and you handled it about as well as you could. Balancing the flash with ambient may have helped a bit more.