Indian Paintbrush

[Nancy Bell]

The red of some of Indian Paintbrush can be so rich. I had great fun trying many different angles and perspectives with this flower. This is one very close-up using the redness of the flower as an OOF back drop to the detailed center of the flower.

Canon 100 f2.8 Macro, ISO 800, 1/1000, f5.

Comments and critiques very welcome.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Nancy,
I am becoming a convert to shallow DOF....albeit slowly. I like the colors and where you chose the focus but I am bothered by the petal that is going out to the left....it is drawing my eye away from the centrl focus point. I do think you could crop a good portion off the left....eliminating it and then toning down the brightest areas. I do think you could also use some NR.....which is showing up in the darkest areas mostly........just to smooth that out some more. I think a few tweaks will help take this up a notch and I applaud your efforts at exploring a different view!

[Nancy Bell]

Thanks for the advice Roman. I tried to incorporate all of your excellent suggestions.

[Ken Childs]

Nancy, the repost definitely looks better. I do think that the petals in the BG still need to be smoothed out somewhat, either using excessive noise reduction of some sort of blur.

[Desmond Chan]

I think this would look good hanging big on a wall as is and more so as the repost.

[Anita Bower]

One of the joys of macro is getting in very close, as you did in this image. One discovers new worlds.

I like your idea of using the flower petals as a background for the pistil, especially when the colors are so rich and beautiful. The pistil could be in sharper focus, which makes me wonder if you hand held or used a tripod. I always use a tripod, plus live view to focus exactly where I want, but some photographers on this forum get excellent shots hand-held.

What kind of light did you have? I'm asking because of the deep shadows. If the flower was in the sun, holding up something to create shade would soften the contrast.

I think your repost is stronger than the original image. I have cropped the image even more to show another option, and softened the pinks a bit by using a soft brush with a pink color. I also ran it through noise reduction.

Thanks for sharing.