Vertically Challenged

[Julie Kenward]

I posted this same group of gerberas yesterday and a few of you thought they'd look better as a vertical image (get it..."vertically challenged"...I crack myself up. ;)) So I went in and found a few and this was one of my favorites. (Note: it seems to have lost a little bit of its sharpness in the upload.)

Canon 40D, 100mm f/2.8
f6.3 @ 1/50th, ISO 800 (remember it was REALLY overcast)
Manual mode, pattern metering, flash fired
ACR/CS4 - same processing as before

[Ed Vatza]

I think the flowers look fine to me. Still am lovin' the colors. Detail looks good to my eye. I like the interplay among the stems. And you know how I feel about black backgrounds. :D It's a winner in my book.

[Charles Wesley]

Jules,

I like the vertical much more. It's uplifting to me. Yellow being the brightest color on black is very powerful. What causes a.jpg to lose sharpness when uploaded? Is it compression and why?
____________________
Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL

[Julie Kenward]

I've always been told it's compression - could just be that what looks sharp on a monitor doesn't always look the same when it goes through the transfer? I'm sure someone with more technical savvy could explain it better but I know over the two years of being on BPN sometimes the sharpness I thought I had didn't look the same when it was uploaded.

[Ken Childs]

I've always been told it's compression - could just be that what looks sharp on a monitor doesn't always look the same when it goes through the transfer? I'm sure someone with more technical savvy could explain it better but I know over the two years of being on BPN sometimes the sharpness I thought I had didn't look the same when it was uploaded.
I definitely prefer the vertical image. :)

Your files shouldn't be changed at all when uploading unless there's something built into the BPN storage system that compresses them automatically and I doubt that is the case. Have you ever downloaded something you've uploaded and compared it to your pre-upload version? You might also try viewing something on your hard drive with your web browser to see if there might be something odd going on there.

[Aidan Briggs]

Another vote for the vertical. I love the arrangement and the yellow on black. The loss of sharpness (which is very minute here) could be possible if the image was over the size limits. I think the system would have to compress the image more to fit the size limits. Just a guess though.

[Markus Jais]

Beautiful image. Great colors and composition. The black BG is great here.

Markus

[Jerry van Dijk]

I vote for the horizontal (maybe I'm vertically challenged :D), although I like that I see more stem here. Maybe some extra canvas on the left of the vertical may make it work for me. I now feel the flowers are too tight in the frame.

[Vida van der Walt]

This is stunning Jules! Also prefer the vertical and everything I said to the previous post goes for this one as well.
I would maybe have a tiny bit more space on the left and right.:)

[Barbara Kile]

I love this comp and the 'dancing' of the 3 stems! I also like that the main flower seems to be framed by the backs of the 2 others, resulting in the focal flower really standing out. Lovely!

[Anita Bower]

Another beatiful image of these Gerberas! I like it for all the reasons given above, the main reason for me being the bright happy colors against the black and the beautiful details you captured. These are really lovely flowers, with their change of color along the edges. The lighting is gorgeous! In my experience, overcast days work really well for flower images.

Now, to be a bit different, I have a mild preference for the horizontal image you posted earlier.