Poppy

The 800e is a whole new leaning curve Played a bit in color efex and sharpened centre taken f4 and i think 1/20
Grahame comments welcome i can only get better i think

Center is sharp. like the shadows there. That green stem bothers me. I think if it were mine I'd treat it as a bloom without the stem.

Grahame, I love the colors and the "portrait" feel to this. I'm undecided about the stem - it seems so thin to be supporting such a big bloom. Let's see what others think:S3:

Yes, I think the thinness is what bothers me.

Hi Grahame, Poppies are one of my favorite flowers. I like the way you captured the details in the center. I tweaked the color a little as it seemed to have a slight greenish cast- however it may have had a greenish tint to it so I left some. I also see some artifacts in the BG, in the repost I selected the flower and put it on it's own layer so I was free to fill in the BG, I revealed your frame with a layer mask. I also moved the flower to the right - to me it seems to flow better. Oh and I beefed up the stem but I did a quickie just to show you ( I would spend more time doing it right if you like it) BUT these are just my opinions and your vision is what really counts. I hope I have given some suggestions that you could apply if you wanted to.

The green cast doesn't really bother me because it works well with the yellow and blue. Your framing job was right on. It's very good for this subject. I agree with Denise about changing the composition, and I like her sturdier version of the stem.

A group of us from the local photography group usually get together on Saturday mornings. One of the topics that came up was the 800e learning curve -- more about post-processing than about the technical aspects of using it. Fortunately, it sounded like the only one of us who currently has the 800e is very happy with his images now that he's learning more about creating them. On prints, he sees more differences when viewing from various distances, but he's gotten to the point that the images look good from close and far.

I think Denise nailed it. Just the right fine tuning to get the most out of this great shot.

Thank you all so much what denise did is spot on I can see i will have to brush up on my post processing i used a clone tool did not think of selecting and new background
Grahame

Nice idea and composition, I like the framing and agree with above about stem