Imperfect

[Desmond Chan]

300 f4 on D700 hand-held. Manual exposure mode. ISO 800 f8 1/400s.

Outdoor, open area, cloudy day. Used SpyderCube as white balance reference.

Cropped plus darkening the leaves in the background. The flower itself is as shot other than toning down the yellow after converting to sRGB mode.

Comments welcome and appreciated !!

[Ken Childs]

Desmond, it looks like you did well with the yellows. They look very natural and the shot as a whole looks good. I like the general comp but I think I'd prefer a tighter crop with a little off the top and bottom and more off the right and left.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Beautiful image and as Ken mentioned, the yellows have been neatly exposed and processed. Several crops/compositions possible.
However I like it as presented as well.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Desmond, this image has a nice mood! I love those yellows and the details you've captured. Compositionwise I would take off about half of the black area on the right.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Desmond,
Count me in on the multiple crop camp......leaning towards Jerry's jsut off the right.......but the op is very nice......so even if you chose to leave this like that.....not a biggie....more personal preference. I am debating a hair more light in the center of the flower......but great job on those yellows and I love the way it fades into the black!:cheers:

[Desmond Chan]

Guess what, the first crop I did was a tighter one, i.e., mostly less room on the top and the right. Then I wondered if other would find it too tight :D:D:p

Thank you folks !!

[Vida van der Walt]

Lovely image Desmond. The yellows pop against the dark bg. I like the comp as is.:)

[Anita Bower]

High impact image. I like how the green and yellow emerge from the dark bg. Could be cropped differently, but works this way. I might try lightening the center. Excellent.

[Julie Kenward]

Lovely subdued image, Desmond. I noticed you cropped it to 11 x 7.5. I redid the crop size to 10 x 8 and brought all the sides in a bit. This put the yellow flower towards the URC and gave it a stronger presence in the frame. Also added a teeny tiny touch of boost to the midtones with a levels adjustment but I'm on my work monitor so that might not have been a good thing. Excuse it if it's too bright!

[Desmond Chan]

Thank you for your repost, Julie ! A tighter crop was what I had in mind in the first place :) I didn't really mean to have 11x7.5. Usually my image is 800x640 pixels. Just thought I might as well tried something different and chose 900 pixels instead. ;)

[Julie Kenward]

I'm glad you liked it!