Poppy Bud

[Roger Williams]

One bud deserves another. Comments invited.

Canon 40D, Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS + 1.4TC @ 241mm, ISO 250, 1/100 @ f/8, HH

[Ed Vatza]

Hey bud ;),

Excellent detail here. can always tell by the little hairs. ANd I really like how the flower is just starting to peek out. background is excellent. I might consider cropping some from the bottom (the stem seems to long) and from the right. Otherwise, a fine looking image to me.

[denise ippolito]

Roger, I like the composition and your details look very nice. I love that the flower is ready to break -it gives a nice hint of color, nice BG. I might tone down that one brighter spot on the left. Nicely done.

[Anita Bower]

I like it very much. The red against the green is stunning, and I love all the little white hairs against the darker BG.

I think it might be brightened up a bit, which I took the liberty to do. I also cloned the light area on the left edge and cropped it a bit from the top. I brightened it using Levels and the highlight eyedropper (a trick I learned here from Jules).

What do you think? I must grow Poppies next year so I can get some lovely images such as this.

[Roger Williams]

Thanks for all the comments, and Anita, I like your improvements. The brightened image has more snap and detail and the comp is better with less canvas on top. I hadn't noticed the whitish area on the left side before it was pointed out.

[Anita Bower]

Thanks for all the comments, and Anita, I like your improvements. The brightened image has more snap and detail and the comp is better with less canvas on top. I hadn't noticed the whitish area on the left side before it was pointed out.

You are welcome. Many of us don't notice things until others point them out. That is one of the advantages of this forum! :-)

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Roger,
I like how Anita brought it up a bit and gave it some snap......I'd lean towards Ed's crop too......since the stem is the most OOF......it will just concentrate our attention on the bud! Nice job on the BG too.

[Julie Kenward]

I agree with the other comments. This is really a good image to take a close look at because it shows you the importance of a clean, even background and having the main subject even with the focal plane from top to bottom. You used an aperture of f8 and yet the stem is out of focus quite a bit compared to the bud. Lining your camera up so the entire flower/stem was an even distance from the focal plane would have helped to capture the crispness from top to bottom.

You also have to be careful with those zoom lenses - they like to bring the BG right up to the front and that's probably why you have an uneven BG. It's certainly not bad by any means but a shorter focal length probably wouldn't have caught that white streak in the LL side.

Good pop, Anita - but be careful that the white hairs don't go too far and get blown details. If the white dropper does over do it, you can always manually slide the white slider in levels over to the left and stop before it spikes on the right side of the histogram.

[Anita Bower]

Good pop, Anita - but be careful that the white hairs don't go too far and get blown details. If the white dropper does over do it, you can always manually slide the white slider in levels over to the left and stop before it spikes on the right side of the histogram.

This is a good point, Jules. I think the whites did spike on the right. Thanks for the tip.
Anita

[Roger Williams]

Thanks for all the helpful comments. This was not a set-up image with tripod, etc. Like most, this was taken during a morning walk with the dog. I always carry the 300 f/4 + 1.4x or the 70-200 f/4 + 1.4 for birds, deer or whatever subjects I find that day. Not always the ideal combination. Maybe I'll slip the 100 f/2.8 into my pocket to carry along.