I would welcome your views on the photo of the lily, taken at the RHS Harlow Carr garden in Yorkshire, handheld on a beautiful sunny day in mid-July.
Thanks
Ray
Welcome to BPN and the macro/flora forum. You'll find a nice bunch of folks here who are all eager to help.
Nice first post. Good selective focus on the lower stamens and the pistel. Personally, I think the image could stand a bit more dof so you could have stopped down more especially since you already have the leaves on the left and the bud in the LR in partial focus. Also the blue (sky???) in the UR background seems distracting to me. I think I would have preferred to see the flower surrounded by green.
Let's see what others have to say. And again welcome.
Many thanks Ed both for the welcome and the constructive comments, point is taken about the dof, not sure now what the blue is in the UR background. I honestly had not noticed it until you pointed it out, now it shout at me! I'll submit another photo from the same day but one of a poppy.
Regards,
Ray
Ray, I think you did pretty well here. I agree that a bit more DOF would be nice but you did an excellent job of getting the stamen and pistol to be sharp where it needed to be.
From a compositional standpoint I want you to look at where the main stamen are - they feel pretty dead center to me. If you had moved one step to the right and twisted just a bit you would have had the same overall image but the stamen would have ended up going from center to the left side, putting them on a diagonal and more in the rule of thirds position. I think it would have strengthened the composition even more.
Me? I'm a lover of blue sky...I almost always leave it in when it is in the same hue level as the rest of the colors in the image. I like that splash of blue - it plays well against those soft lovely yellows.
Julie, many thanks for the comments, they are much appreciated especially with regard to the composition changing the angle of the stamen. I never crossed my mind to shoot it that way, which is the difference I am looking to learn about.
Regards,
Ray
Lily
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