Jewelweed Ladybug

[Bee Emily]

Kodak Z740 P&S
iso 80
38mm
1/90
f2.8
handheld
Mid September 2006 Brown County State Park Nashville, IN USA

[Julie Kenward]

Okay...now I get it! I couldn't figure out how this could be aperture 2.8 and then I realized it was a point-n-shoot!

Although I think you have a lovely flower here, you definitely need to be aware of what is in your background. You've got a lot going on here and none of it really adds to the overall image. You might try darkening it a bit or try cloning out some of the distractions.

You also are very oversaturated on your reds - that is why you have hot pink areas on the lower petals. Try backing down on the saturation and see if that doesn't help.

[Bee Emily]

Jules,
Thanks for the tips. The image is completely unedited except for cropped. Jewelweed is usually a yellow/orange color and this one was this juicy red color. The ladybug was just a little bonus.
Bee (Emily is my last name---confusing huh)

[Dan Brown]

Hi Bee. I like the soft lighting here but I see noise in the BG and some distractions also. So, in my repost, I reduced noise in Noise Ninja on the BG only, used the qiuck mask technique and some cloning to remove some of the distractions on the upper left, lower left and lower middle OOF BG. And, just for kicks, I selectively sharpened the really sharp areas of the your flower. As for the red, I am not very good at judging whether red is over or under saturated so I took Julies word for it and opened the image in ACR (adobe camera raw) and reduced the sat. on the red only about 4 points:o

And after all of that work and looking at the image, I still can't find the ladybug????:confused::confused::D

[Bee Emily]

The bug is in the center of the flower.
Nice editing

[Julie Kenward]

Dan, I'm with you...I had to look and look for it! Finally saw it sitting there in the inside of the flower. How cool is that?

[Mike Moats]

Hey Bee, interesting find with the lady bug inside. Point and shoots are great cameras for most images but have a tough time bluring backgrounds, even shooting wide open, so it as good as its gonna get. I think Dan did a nice job on the repost.