Columbines

[Anita Bower]

The Columbines in my garden this year are delightful I have both natives and non-natives. This is a non-native.

I'm posting 3 versions (see below). 1: Nothing cloned out; 2: cloned LR corner; 3: also cloned flower to left. The first has more of the feeling of my garden. The second looks a bit out of balance, the third is the cleanest, but doesn't capture the feel I wanted. Maybe I need to include more columbines to get the feel I want.

Nikon D300, Sigma 105mm macro, outdoors, natural light, tripod, f9*, 1/50, ISO 800, manual focus, manual metering & pattern mode; PP: RAW conversion and initial noise reduction in Elements 7, (basic) editing in PS7, slight crop and vignetting; noise reduction with Neat Image Demo.

[Anita Bower]

Version No. 2

[Anita Bower]

Version No. 3

[John Christian]

I like the second one. If the third one was chosen it would need a tighten comp. Looks good.

[Julie Kenward]

Anita, I love Columbines...can't wait for mine to come up!

First, beautiful overall feel to this image. I do think you've got a bit too much stem for the size of the flowers, though. I recropped to an 8x8 from your original 8x11 just to give you another look at it. ( I think an 8x10 would also work, eliminating just a little of the stem at the bottom.) I also opened up levels and chose "Add contrast 2" to give the entire image a little more pop. To me, the greens are pretty light and I wanted the image to have a little more strength to it. That might not be your intention, though, and that's certainly just my opinion.

I really do wish the back flower was more in focus but I think you chose the best exposure for the situation.

[Joseph Martines]

The second one gets my vote.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Anita, I like the first. Like the taller version with the leaves in the corner. Love complimenting BG. Very pretty.

[denise ippolito]

Anita, I vote for #2, # 1 if it had a bit more to the foliage at the bottom. Lovely image!

[Kaushik Balakumar]

I would go with the 2nd version. For my taste buds, the bottom-left flower/bud provides a balance to the composition.
Might increase the overall contrast however.

[Anita Bower]

Thank you, photo friends. You always provide good suggestions on how to improve my images.
I am intrigued by the different opinions on which image to go with.
A special thanks to Jules who goes beyond the call of duty to tell me exactly what to do in post processing.
:-)