Profile of a Paper Daisy

[KathieThomas]

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4057/4320825171_045f858387.jpg

Taken in my garden today.

Nikon D90, F8.0, 1/125 300mm lense.

This is my first photo posted here so hope I'm doing it the right way.

[Julie Kenward]

Kathi, welcome to the Macro Flora Forum! Your image is a little small - you might check out the posting guidelines at the top of the forum page to see if you can get a larger sized image to show up...it helps us look at the details a little better! This has a beautiful BG color to it - was this what you saw in the field or did you adjust the color in post-production (pp) to get a different hue? I say this because the flowers and stems feel a bit on the "blue" side of things. You might look at adjusting the color balance just a bit and see if that yields a closer version to what you saw in field. Feel free to share as much info about the image as you think we need to help with our critiques.

There are two points about your composition that could make it stronger and both would be done in-field. When framing the image try to avoid cutting off any part of the flowers in the scene (such as in your upper left corner) - you can always crop down if you want to but you have a much harder time adding back in the pieces that are missing. Also, see how your two shorter flowers kind of bisect each other? Try walking around the area and finding a way to get them both in the image without crossing each other's paths if possible. For instance, a step or two to the left probably would have put the front flower to the left and the back flower more to the right and then all three would show nicely in the image. This is especially true when using a longer lens like you have here because they tend to "compress" the scene leaving you feeling like everything is right on top of each other.

You have very nice details in the front flower - good focus - and I like the way the front flower is leaning over diagonally in the image.

[KathieThomas]

Thanks Jules for your detailed response. The image is 1000px on the longest side so just under the 1024 mentioned. I tend to make all my images that size for posting at Flickr and elsewhere. Sorry, I didn't realise it would be seen as small. It was the pp that made the background that colour and I decided I liked it so kept it there but have the original and can do another so it's more green than blue.

Thanks for the tips on how I could have taken the photo - I'll look out for that in future. I did take a few of this set of flowers and this is just one of them. I might check to see if any of the others meet the suggestions you've made, otherwise I'll try again. The 300mm is new so at this stage I've been working at the focus part as I've been doing a lot of hand-held with it. Most things I take are birds, insects, my pets, etc so not used to working with a tripod or monopod but can see I'll need to start learning that too.

[Anita Bower]

Welcome Kathie! I've learned a lot on this forum and I hope you do too.

These are beautiful flowers. I just looked them up and learned that they are native to Australia.

You write that you are working on focusing with your new lens. Well, you did a good job of focusing in this image. The front petals and the center of the front flower are perfect focus. Having the other flowers a bit out of focus helps my eye go to the main flower, and works quite well here. The colors are lovely (myabe a bit too blue, as Jules says). I don't mind bisecting flowers, but think I would have them a little more apart, so that the three flowers form a triangle, which is a strong compositional element. Getting that top flower completely in the frame would make this image stronger.

Maybe someone who knows more about sizing can explain why your image is small. I keep my pixels at about 800 for height, which is the maximum here, and they are usually large.

Hope you post some more images.

[Anita Bower]

Kathie: For a discussion of how to re size for the forums, see the recent posts on this forum for the image " Veined White."