Water Lily

[Jory Griesman]

My first shot at submitting a macro. Unfortunately, clipped tip of right petal with initial capture. Cropped tighter at bottom than I might have liked, but there was a lot of debris, which was distracting.

Nikon D300, with Tamron 200-500 mm lens at 500 mm
f/6.3, 1/160 sec, ISO 400, exposure comp. -2/3

[Ed Vatza]

Hi Jory,

Welcome to the macro/flora board. Lots of great people here who provide excellent critiques. Hope you enjoy it.

Like where you were headed with this composition. You already mentioned the clipped petal. That is just something you need to be careful with next time out. Otherwise the lily looks great. Love the water drops on it. The biggest area for improvement, I don't know that you could do anything about. The area round the flower needs cleaning up. If it is in a small pond (we have a small manmade one in our garden), you may be able to fish out the debris. If it is a big one, you may want to keep search for a cleaner area. Just my two cents!

[Stuart Frohm]

I greatly admire this photograph. If I was going to be picky, I would not complain about the clipped petal or the material at the bottom of the photo. Instead, I'd pick at the brownish stuff in the background at the 9 o'clock position, which appears to grow out of the flower but is floating in the water.
I hope to see much more of your work here.
All best,
Stu

[Art Kornienko]

Hi Jory, Ed and Stuart have some great advice, I would have left a bit more room on the left and also cleaned up the 9 o'clock stuff. The lighting is very nice and the drops of water add to the effect, not sure if colours seem a little weak, and a sharper lens for this application would have made a difference (doesn't seem quite as sharp as it could be), and always pay attention to the bg when looking through the viewfinder.

[Julie Kenward]

Hello Jory! Welcome to the macro forum. I downloaded your image and noticed that you have both clipped both ends on the histogram. If you look closely at the white areas of your flower you'll see that there is no detail in the petals - they are virtually solid white. Also, looking at the water, you can see where there is no detail in the darkest areas also. Make sure you always check the histogram on your camera when making the first image to ensure you have some data in all five boxes but none that goes past either edge. This will ensure that everything gets some detail to it.

Now, if you shot this in RAW format instead of jpeg you could probably rescue those highlights and lowlights. If that's the case, go back and give it a look and see if you can pull those in.

Another suggestion would be to walk around and try different angles on a flower like this to alleviate as much of the background clutter as you can. Put your focus on the part of the flower you want most in focus and then stay with a wider aperture. It's always a great idea to take several images at several apertures and pick the one you like best when you get home and have a good look.

Looking forward to your next image...glad to have you join the group!

[Anita Bower]

Jory:

You have received enough suggestions to keep you busy, so I won't add any more. I like the angle of the flower, the sweep of the petals both up and down, the water drops, and the unusual position of the lily partly out of the water. Keep up the good work!

[Jory Griesman]

Thanks, everybody. Unfortunately, this was my only angle, as the flower sat in the middle of the pond, and the only other angle, via a bridge, was partially obstructed. This position also didn't allow me to get rid of nature's disarray surrounding the flower. Re: Julie's comments, I think the original NEF had a much better histogram, but I didn't have access to it when submitting it here. I must have made things worse in PS. The original background/surrounding area had a lot more detail, which I tried to darken to make less obvious, and perhaps made it worse! f/6.3 was the largest aperture at 500 mm, so I couldn't open it up wider to get rid of/blur the extraneous elements. C'est la vie. Sports photography, here I come!