Dramatic presentation. I like the black background with bold yellows and touch of red here. Nicely exposed.
I wonder if there was a bit of breeze or movement of the flower, as it is not super sharp.
I tried a few different crops, just for my education. The only thing that I thought might be a viable option was to not have quite so much stem and go a bit more pano, but it certainly wasn't clear cut over your original.
A striking image with the bright colors against the black background, Ed, and nicely composed. I wonder if selectively toning down the whitest areas would be an improvement? - something you might experiment with.
I'm also having trouble with the sharpness but it's the orientation of the flower that's got me perplexed. Is this how they naturally hang? It seems upside down to me without a curvature in the stem showing.
I do like the BG but everything inside me is screaming to flip the photo rightside up.
First things first. Yes Julie, that is how they naturally hang. I think the "issue" may be that I decided to come at it from slightly above which can distort one's perception of what is already an unusually shaped flower.
Now on to sharpness. Its a good thing that I have an eye doctor appointment scheduled for August 6 because the image looks sharp enough to me. And yet all of you mentioned sharpness. there has to be something something to it. Actually Randy sort of hit it. I was holding the particular stem out from the plant with a McClamp attached to the leg of the tripod. When I do that, I usually use a remote shutter release because depressing the shutter causes the whole thing to "tremble". Yesterday, I left the remote in another bag. Probably should have used the timer. That said, I am still missing the lack of sharpness. Old eyes, I guess.
It is funny you mentioned the orientation issue. I rotated this thing around a bunch of times, trying to get more comfortable with that issue, never completely happy, felt Ed's original was best. I didn't do a degree by degree rotation, just the rotation tool, and perhaps using the 'leveler' tool might work, try little bits at a time, maybe 10 degree rotations.
Ed - . I did stare at it for a bit, but it just isn't quite critically sharp.
The dark BG is most effective. The orientation of the flower in this image makes it difficult for me to figure out what the flower actually looks like. Not quite abstract enough, and not quite obvious enough.
Pale Touch-Me-Not
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