BPN inspired selective focus

[Roman Kurywczak]

As many of you know.....I live at f22 or 32 when shooting macros.....seeing all the wonderful soft/selective focus images.....knowing that I struggle with them......was making me nuts!!!! Since I didn't really need any help there.....decided to seriously try today for the effect. I promised myself I wouldn't go up to f22 at all!!! I also didn't want to cheat and try to replicate what you all have done here in the last few days.....so a couple of hours later.....this is the results of my first attempts!
Sunflower.....bright overcast and gold reflector...natural light. Canon 1D Mark lll with the Sigma 180mm macro and 20mm extension tube......hand held at f3.5 aor 1/100 sec and ISO 200. Now I have to go lie down before I go to f32:D!

[denise ippolito]

Roman, Beautiful soft focus yet the colors are bold and gorgeous. It has an almost yin-yang feel to it. Nicely done. BTW I never had any doubts that you could do this, and do it well:)

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hey Roman, nice work for an f22 addict! Personally, I'm very distracted by the black 'thingy' in the FG, which keeps drawing my eye away from those gorgeous oranges and the nice soft focus petal pointing at us out of the orange haze of the BG. I would have preferred something like I posted here. Hope you don't mind me messing with your image, just showing my view.

[Barbara Kile]

I'm with Jerry. The dark and light seemed like there were 2 subjects in the frame, and the selective focus flower petal with the lovely curve is heavenly!

[Julie Kenward]

Knowing it is a sunflower I appreciated the composition but if I didn't know that I'd be all over Jerry's version. I think if the tip were the same tone of green as the rest of the leaf it wouldn't compete quite so much with those sunny oranges.

You did good, my friend! I know how hard this is for you, Mr. F32. :D If you want to really freak yourself out sometime I'll lend you my new Lensbaby with its macro kit. Holy cow...talk about low DOF!

[Charles Wesley]

Roman,

Nice work on this one. I need to make the jump into wide open aperture photograph myself. Will try soon. I've always been impressed with your diversity of imagery.

Thanks for giving me the push...
____________________
Charlie Wesley
St Augustine Beach, FL

[Anita Bower]

Good job! Lovely colors. I like the composition, with the two areas of focus on a diagonal line. The out of focus green is a color I'm not overly fond of.

Seems this forum moving away from "sharp, sharp, sharp" to "soft and blurry." Variety is good. :)