Hey, Bud!!

[Ed Vatza]

Image made just before dark tonight.

Canon Rebel XT, Sigma 70mm Macro lens, Canon 430 EX Flash with LumiQuest Softbox, tripod-mounted

1/13 sec at f/16; ISO 800; -2/3 EV; FEC -1

[Bruce Murden]

Ed - excellent lighting to bring out the details in the greenery and the yellow petals. The time of day and the flash use makes for a good dark BG.

In ideal world improvement, I'd like to see if there could have been more of the stems to the right without too much chaos, or crop off the bottom of the comp to reduce the weight of the negative space below and left of the stem. There's a hint of a leaf on the bottom that could be cropped or cloned out, if nothing else is done. Also, I think the OOF on the front closed bud may be improved with smaller aperture or two exposures, one for the main bud, one for the close bud, and layering them together.

Thanks for getting one more image in before dark!

[Ed Vatza]

Ed - excellent lighting to bring out the details in the greenery and the yellow petals. The time of day and the flash use makes for a good dark BG.

In ideal world improvement, I'd like to see if there could have been more of the stems to the right without too much chaos, or crop off the bottom of the comp to reduce the weight of the negative space below and left of the stem. There's a hint of a leaf on the bottom that could be cropped or cloned out, if nothing else is done. Also, I think the OOF on the front closed bud may be improved with smaller aperture or two exposures, one for the main bud, one for the close bud, and layering them together.

Thanks for getting one more image in before dark!

Thanks for the comments/critique Bruce. As you can see there was more stem to the right. :D I liked this original but them I started to feel that maybe there was too much stem so I did a bit of cropping from the right. Looking at the two a day later, I think I prefer the uncropped version with more stem.

[Julie Kenward]

I like the repost better, too. I would be inclined to clone that bottom corner leaf out and leave all the rest. Nice work!

[Robert O'Toole]

Ed,

I like the repost more but the small leaf sticking up is a little distracting. I would just crop the first image, without the small leaf.

Robert