Spring Crocus

[Christopher Miller]

Spent some time photographing crocuses last week. So happy that there are finally flowers again! :)

Olympus SP-550 UZ
f3.5 @ 1/125, ISO 100, +.3 EV
Aperture priority mode, pattern metering, cloudy WB
Processed in PS CS2; curves adjustment, saturation boost, noise reduction, and cropped

[Cheryl Flory]

love the pollen sharpness, but would like to see more in focus. But the dof you have here certainly focuses the attention!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Christopher,
I too would probably prefer more DOF but for me that isn't the main issue.....in the LLC the oof triangle is the most distracting and the falloff in the MG right.....you could possibly rotate and crop.......but let's see what others chime in.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Chris, I like it as it is, the DOF looks fine, and would agree with Roman on the lower left triangle, but not sure if you could clone in some petal lines there.

[Julie Kenward]

I also thought of cloning the petal lines; another option would be to set a blend mode to screen to lighten that area up and then mask back in the rest of the area so it's back to where it is now.

I'd also clone out the little gray spot at the top center of the frame.

Beautiful flower these little ones are and you did a very nice job capturing it.

[Christopher Miller]

Thanks Cheryl, Roman, Mike, and Jules. Much appreciated. The shallow DOF was deliberate, though I agree that it would have been better with all the stigmas in focus. I tried lightening the OOF triangle in the LLC as suggested and cloned out the spot mentioned by Jules. Please let me know what you think.

[Julie Kenward]

;)I do like it better but I would try to clone those stripes if you can - I think it would bring a real cohesion to both sides being striped.

[Ken Childs]

Chris, I think everything has already been covered. The colors look great so it's worth a try to fix the other minor problems.

[Christopher Miller]

Thanks Ken and Jules. I'll have a go at trying to clone in some stripes.

[Anita Bower]

Your second version looks good to me. Good luck in cloning in stripes--sounds tricky.