“Last Year’s Flower” by Dawne Olson

I love the subject and the title. The photo has remendous appeal. The colors are easy on the eye and I loe the patterns and texture.

The photo does need more contrast. It’s framed with black, which i like. The stem leads the eye off the photo to the top, mostly because it is as light as the light lines in the photo. Darkening it or eliminating it would help. Playing with it in Photoshop, I darkened the photo and added contrast. This gave it sharper lines.

Other than that, its a great photo.

i would think that shooting straight down on this you would want the entire circumference of the dead blossom in focus. the right side drifts out and that could be because your lens wasn’t on the exact same plane as the flower. great subject though, and where it is sharp i love it. a little dark, but that is a matter of aesthetics.

Thanks for the great critique! I questioned if it was a little dark. I also noticed that the right side of the blossom goes off focus. I made many attempts at eliminating that problem. I had a tripod set up in mud in a plowed field it kept shifting and the wind was blowing etc etc etc. Anyway.. I still found it to be a nice picture I just wondered if the out of focus aspect “ruined” it? Funny I never even noticed the whiteness of the stem coming off the top of the picture; an easy fix on that and thank you for catching it! If the wind EVER stops blowing here (typical Spring in the Midwest) I will try to go out and re-take the photo.

I’m leaving the high desert here in New Mexico for the Midwest (NW Ohio) next week and I will be taking my camera with me and probably wading through muddy fields too.

You might consider picking that flower and bringing it inside to shoot it. I have a portable desktop studio that works well for something like this. Best Buy carries them sometimes or Curcuit City, but you can setup your own. You will have a lot more control over placement and lighting.

wow! this pic is so rich in texture. nice

its a bit dark tho and the subject doesnt really “pop”. but its lovely and sharp and a very interesting subject too.

I went back out last night to try to “re-take” the same picture. It was the same time of day, but the main difference was that it was sunny and not cloudy out. Otherwise conditions were pretty much the same and I managed to get a very sharp clear shot of the same plant but you would not believe how different it turned out. The lighting made for a much different affect and it loses some of the subtleties of this image as far as texture and lines I think but I don’t know… If I upload that new image to RB and then re-send it here for comparison in this thread maybe you can tell me if you think it is better with the different lighting. It is definately tack sharp all around the perimeter the second time around and I am happier with that. I’m very interested in the “desk top studio” idea! I love that! Thank you for the tip!

Nice, but it’s a little dark, are you going to post the “new one” that you took?

The “re-take” should be up soon!

wow. i love it. infinitely better IMHO. very nice circle in a square. sharp all the way around. the one thing that took me a minute to realize was how the center was set lower in than the edges. i was about to rip on the center focus until i saw that it must be quite a bit further down from the plane of focus for the spikes around the outside edge. so really, i have nothing to pick at here. well done.

You posted it!

I keep saying this – photography is all about light. And its true. This is a great photo! It was well worth reshooting. A good exercise in natural lighting is to choose a subject like this one and shoot it at different times of the day. Also, right after a rain. On a rainly day you get great rain drops and richer colors and the day after a rain you can still pickup on the richness minus the drops.

The black background really sets it off.

Definitely prefer the second shot, much more clarity and contrast. Great Shot. Not picking at all so please don’t get me wrong in the following comment, just my personal preference and thought out loud – I’m not a great fan a centred pictures and in most case prefer the rule of thirds – have just tried this picture just off centre?

Great shot, love it. :-)))

love the second shot for its clarity and DOF of the outer sheath of the petals sepals. Love the contrast of colour. Well done!

Thank you EVERYONE! I debated about taking it “off center” because I too prefer that. And actually, in my portfolio I put up a “cropped” version so if you want to see how that works feel free to stop in and take a look?
Again… I genuinely appreciate the feedback and time everyone took to comment!

rules aren’t always to be followed. in this case the subject fits the square box it is in perfectly. being centered isn’t a bad presentation when the situation calls for it.

The Rule of thirds is generally a good rule to work with. With it, you break down an image into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have a grid with 9 parts. Using this grid you can better assign points of interest in a more balanced manner. Once you have mastered this rule, you can begin to break more creatively.

Macros, by their nature, are full frame with one point of interest, so the rule of thirds can seldom be applied.

Dawne – I love the second one. It is amazing how much extra detail there is in the shot with the better light.

Your second shot is definitely much better. A few thoughts on lighting, depth of field (how deep a feature can be yet still remain in focus), and dampness.
My advice is to have a reasonably bright light source, definitely coming from the side to accentuate contour and texture by shadowing. When the light is relatively bright, your camera will tighten up the aperture (tiny opening for the lens), and the direct benefit of this is that the depth of field will grow significantly, meaning that many more parts of the flower will be in focus. It all depends on the effect you are after, On dampness, rain both cleans dust off the object, and the dampness will allow deeper colours to be much richer without the surface whiteness of bloom or hariness to bloch the richness. At times I even go so far as to take out a fine spray bottle to ‘bring on the rain’ as it were.
The improvement proves one thing – your eye was right when you recognized the flower as an ideal macro object! Great result! Regards, Keith.

Hi Dawne, went and checked out your cropped version of this photo, looks great. I agree with J.K York and rules don’t always need to be follow and in this case probably doesn’t, just curious what it may have looked like. I love both versions and both are well done.:-)