Wood Poppy Bud

[Ed Vatza]

Image made Saturday morning at Bowman's Hill in New Hope, Pa.

Re: Leaves - I like the leaves the way they are here. I believe they provide an anchor for the bud and stem. I have images without the leaves and don't like them as much. More leaves/full leaves and they begin to compete with the delicate bud. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! :D

Canon 30D and Sigma 150mm Macro lens; handheld.

1/800 sec @ f/8.0; ISO 400; 0 EV; Natural Light

[denise ippolito]

Ed, Really nice details and I like the BG color. I like the leafs at the bottom but not the one on the far left-I'd crop and clone that one. I would also eliminate some more of the negative space. Very nicely done with the exposure and DOF.

[Anita Bower]

Ed: I love the little hairs on the stem and leaves, and the texture of the Poppy petals. Simple and nice composition, with the bit of leaves anchoring the stem. I like the BG also. (I typed this before reading your comments.) I might crop a bit on the right, and maybe top, but, not a big deal. Nice job!

[Julie Kenward]

Love the flower. Like the leaves. REALLY don't care for the dark spot in the middle. Did you try to lighten/clone that out to mix better with the rest of the BG? I bet you could greatly eliminate it with a little fancy footwork. (For those of you that don't know, when you have a darker area like this one you can choose the clone tool, choose a soft brush, set it to "lighten" and 30-40% and then move the original marker to the lighter area and use that to clone over the darker area in soft, sweeping motions.)

[Ed Vatza]

Hey Jules,

When you really look at this, it strikes me as a pretty darn big area to clone over. I'm not saying it would be impossible to do. I am just saying that it seems an unusually large area to clone and personally I don't particularly like cloning that large an area. Could have something to do with stinking at cloning larger areas! :o

Hope you're feeling better!

[Julie Kenward]

Really? You wouldn't like this better? I think it took me all of three minutes - seriously. I cloned the BG in the dark areas and then put the entire layer on a duplicate layer and brought the midtones up a bit.

No, maybe not perfection and maybe not your vision but don't be afraid to learn to clone well - PM me if you want some suggestions. Once you start playing and get good there's no stopping you.

C'mon...the Memorial Day Macro Challenge is only a month a way! :D:D:D

[Bruce Murden]

Ed, I think Julie's clone helps a lot (now if only she could get her clone to do the chores, she'd have more time for photographing!). Go with something like that, and keep your original bloom colors, lighting, and saturation (it looks like it got a little hot in Jules' redo).

As for your leaves, I like them anchoring, but would add another slight cloning, and removing the upper leaf portion from the left edge, which tugs the eye out of frame a little. The leaf bit just below peaks, then is coming back down as it exits the frame, which makes a more complete little thought there. Just a tiny detail that can make a bigger improvement that you would think.

Thanks for the lovely flower!

[Anita Bower]

Jules: If you give Ed more hints on cloning BG, pls share them with all of us. :-)

[Ed Vatza]

An attempt. To me it just screams that something was done. There's not enough texture or mottling.

[Julie Kenward]

Still...not a bad attempt! If you wanted to keep going...you could either clone the unaffected areas over the affected area to make it match or vice versa. Another way to go is to blur the BG a bit and see if that lessens the apparent cloning effect. Either way, you have certainly improved on the distraction though.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Ed, the cloning really does help the image, and your attempt looks pretty good and with a few tweaks it should be perfect.

[Ed Vatza]

Mike,

For me, it could be weeks of tweaks!

[Anita Bower]

Ed:

This group doesn't want to help you take good photos, they want to help you create excellent photos! And they do it in such a nice way. Enjoy your weeks of tweaks, if you decide to accept.