It's all about color

[Rene Quenneville]

When I look through my library, my eyes are always attracted by this simple photo taken with natural light and fill flash last spring. The colors are just pleasing to me. What do you think? Did I push the contrast or saturation too much?

1/180s
f/7.1 + 0.3 EV
iso 400
150mm macro

[Ed Vatza]

Hi Rene,

The flower looks very nice. Details are good. Color looks fine. It's sharp. And the background is nice with the other oof flowers adding just the right amount of color.

But the elements don't come together well for me. The image is too static. The flower is too centered and the stem just shoots straight up from the bottom center.

Looking at the background here, I would have loved to see the stem enter from the lower right side and work toward the UL filling the green area and leaving the flower surrounds by all that wonderful oof color in the background. Just my opinion though. Let's see what others have to say.

[Dave Mills]

I agree with Ed...With an image like this I will often change the axis, rotate the flower and create a diagonal. I find it less static and more interesting....

[Julie Kenward]

No, I don't think you pushed the saturation too much - it looks very natural to me. I do think the petals would look better if you cleaned/cloned them up a bit - taking out all or most of the pollen spots.

Overall I love the color and the feel of this but I do agree that the image's composition could have been nicer if it hadn't be dead center. It's not often you get a BG this beautiful - when you do take full advantage of it...move around and really try to position the flower so the other colors hit it just right. Something to remember for the future!

[Rene Quenneville]

I haved tried to rotate as much as I could but it was shot very tight. Is it better?