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Julie Kenward
05-22-2010, 03:50 PM
This is a blossom off of one of the many magnolia trees that bloom at our local botanical garden. I did some clean up on the BG to smooth it out a bit as there were some hot spots of light shining through between the branches.

Canon 40D, EF 100mm f/2.8 macro
f4 @ 1/250th, ISO 100
Manual mode, pattern metering, handheld
Evaluative Fill flash used to help with deep shadows
Processed in ACR & CS4; small crop, smoothed BG, sharpening

Ken Childs
05-22-2010, 04:02 PM
I love the bud and the lighting and the colors and the BG. What I don't love is the lower 1/3 of the image.
I think a crop with just the bud and the top leaf from near where they join would fit my tastes.

Hazel Grant
05-22-2010, 04:08 PM
I like the stem. It keeps it from being all green (perhaps too much green) and it anchors the photo.

Anita Bower
05-23-2010, 04:51 PM
What stage of development of the flower is this? Is it what is left after the petals have fallen off? It is interesting. Great job with the BG and light.

Julie Kenward
05-23-2010, 04:53 PM
Anita, this is at the very beginning before the flower forms. The bud you see will grow larger and open up into the flower.

Ken Childs
05-23-2010, 05:01 PM
Anita, this is at the very beginning before the flower forms. The bud you see will grow larger and open up into the flower.
Jules, are you sure of that? I thought this is what you get after the petals have fallen off?
When I was a kid we used to use these as pretend hand grenades. :D

Anita Bower
05-23-2010, 05:03 PM
Anita, this is at the very beginning before the flower forms. The bud you see will grow larger and open up into the flower.
Oh. Thanks.

Cheryl Flory
05-23-2010, 05:18 PM
As mentioned above, I too like the brown stem to break up all the green. I like how the small upper leave curves toward the bud. But the leaf in the lrc keeps drawing my eye away from the bud and out of the image.

Julie Kenward
05-23-2010, 06:37 PM
Ken, it could be I'm wrong. I just assumed because this particular tree had only started to have buds open I thought this was the pre-bud. Maybe this WAS the after bud of one of the first blooms. ???

Robert Smith
05-23-2010, 07:26 PM
Nice shot. This is an immature magnolia fruit (aggregate of follicles). You can see the stamen scars, the petal scars, and the sepal scars near the base of the stem, leaving only the ovules at the top to develop into individual follicles bearing seeds.

Bob Miller
05-23-2010, 10:36 PM
Hi Julie....Loving the bud but I do agree that the lower part of the image ( esp the lrc) weaken the composition...IMHO