Oxalis renellii

[Ed Vatza]

aka False Shamrock or Purple Shamrock. If you are not familiar with it, the leaves are very large, triangular and a purple/black color. The flowers, on the other hand, are very tiny and delicate.

Image made with my Rebel XT and Sigma 70mm Macro lens.

1.6 sec at f/22; ISO 200; EC 0; No Flash on this one.

[Don Lacy]

Interesting comp cutting off the top and side petals while it does not bother me some might find it distracting I like the rest of the comp with the dropping buds behind the open flower.

[Ed Vatza]

Interesting comp cutting off the top and side petals while it does not bother me some might find it distracting I like the rest of the comp with the dropping buds behind the open flower.

Thanks Don. I was waiting for some feedback specifically related to the composition. This is the full image - resized but uncropped. I purposely made the composition with the top and side petals cut off slightly in order to anchor it to the those sides. I wanted the image to "pull" up and right.

Reason? When I have, in the past, carefully "centered" and fit the entire flower in the image, I have been open to a criticism of having the flower "too centered" so I wanted to try something a little different. I thought briefly of cropping a bit more from the top and right to maybe make it more obvious (like I said, the image is now uncropped) but then decided no, I like it the way it is?

Other opinions??

[Robert O'Toole]

I like the fact that you took a chance with the crop. Nice subject.
For me giving the flower a lot more room or cropping in tighter would have been stronger and more purposeful. Also the greens and purples look a little on the light side and not very saturated, a quick Curves treatment and PS would really help.

Robert

[Mike Moats]

Hey Ed, I like your idea of cropping more off the top. I would crop down to just above the flowers center.

[Ed Vatza]

Thanks Robert. Thanks Mike. I have several images that I made that are pretty much the tighter crop that you refer to. However, I decided to take this image and crop it a bit in Lightroom and bring it back. Let me know if you like this crop better.