Bougainvillea

[kostas nianiopoulos]

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/286/bougainvillea.jpg

crop , levels , black mask on BG .

canon 50d , f9, 1/125 , iso 200 , EF USM IS 100MM MACRO L .

thanks for watching .

Good luck to the new Moderators , judge fair , all the best !!!

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Kostas,

I have been a fan of your work for a long time - very creative and super post production skills. I like the black background - the main subject is nice but IMO a bit busy. Moreover, lots of stems and various leaves tug on my eye.

The image has beautiful colors and is a tad tight on the bottom - what say you?

[Lance Peters]

Hi Kostas - agree with Jeff - just that tad tight at the bottom - feels a little cramped. Often simpler is better - does look a tad busy.
Keep em coming.

[kostas nianiopoulos]

this plant always give me , big trouble to get images from it , till now is the best one i made from it , better not see the other ones , i have try more difrent times of day , a lot kind of lights , a lot speed , flash or not flash , sound look , like i have to try more with it till lose all these leaves . Thanks for the replys :)

[Julie Kenward]

Kostas, your light here is just a bit too flat across the plant. I opened a levels adjustment and moved the midtones slider to 1.10 and then pushed the high tone slider into 192 and it finally popped with color and light. You needed just a bit more light falling on the flower to properly expose it and then a touch of contrast would have done the same thing as I did with the levels sliders.

I think you're on the right track with your composition - nice area on all sides - but a little more stem room at the bottom would make it even stronger. I cloned out the piece on the right side that was leaving the frame and made it look like it was part of the stem above it with a simple clone brush. This keeps the eye from wondering where that piece goes to and from pulling the eye out of the frame.

Nice work - just needed a few tweaks!

[kostas nianiopoulos]

ok it looks better with the levels u have add JUlie , but to my taste something is missing , and i the bad thing i dont know what it is this , or elase i could tru to fix it , oh , i got two of those plants , i can try more shots on those . It seems they really like to give hard time all the time i try to get images from these , who knows after 1000 images i would find out what i really want from these ones . Thank u so much and good lcuk over here in your new place as a moderator :)

[Desmond Chan]

I have to agree with Julie; the original looks dark on my monitor, too. It looks like you used flash? I find Julie's repost, though brightened the original up and added contrast, the contrast could be tuned down a bit IMO. It seems to me you've picked a difficult subject to photo. I'd guess at the very least the perspective that you've selected makes this subject looks like a difficult one to photo. Straight, unsoftened flash usually does not create good-looking image. I'd suggest try shooting it under softer lighting to see how it goes. Unless it's your intention, I'd recommend trying to not showing the stems so much :)