CGrindahl
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Upload & Sell: On
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If you read this thread from the beginning Roberta, you know I got in trouble with a purist right away by posting a cropped image. I got this... 
Frankly, I've no interest in following anyone's "rules" about anything except perhaps the speed limit and seat belt law. I've gotten tickets along the way for ignoring such things and I'd rather not spend my money that way when there are so many lenses calling my name. Anyone who wants to abide by rules of any game is free to do so, but with a creative enterprise like photography, I go with what my gut tells me works, regardless of rules anyone else might enjoy applying. I love the old adage that says "being right is the booby prize..." 
Of course, I'm under no illusion that because I like something that everybody else will join me. But that really is beside the point. Yes, I enjoy when someone finds the work I do interesting or on some level accomplished. One of the greatest satisfactions for me was when a friend whose photos regularly appear in the Sierra Club Wilderness calendar asked if he could use a photo I'd taken of him, first on his website and then for an article about him recently published in Outdoor Photography. He likes my work!!! I was deeply honored... and now my work is 'published" in the form of a tiny sepia photo at the bottom of a page buried in the back of the magazine...
Looking at the photo above, my instinct would have me lengthen the photo by not cropping so tight on the bottom. Of course, I've no idea what you captured so there may be nothing there with which to work. But even without that I can appreciate your vision, and how the lens performed in giving you such detail. One of the reasons I like to shoot with a rather narrow depth of field is that it allows me to isolate elements more easily, thereby announcing the focal point of my image. In this image I might have focused on the curved pod with the lovely water droplets and permitted the flower details to be slight blurred. But that is only one way to approach the shot.
My profile has my motto, learn photography by doing. There is no other way, ultimately. I'm a rank beginner working with tubes, but I'm having a great deal of pleasure doing so. It sounds as though you too are a student. I say, keep shooting and keep looking at work done by others. Eventually you will find a way of shooting and displaying your work that feels comfortable to you. That is all that really matters.
I don't use a tripod, I use nothing but natural light, I crop images to gain the composition I seek and I use just about every lens in my kit to shoot with extension tubes. I'm having fun!
This was shot with the 85 f/1.4 AI-s with a 20mm extension tube at f/8.
Edited on Mar 19, 2013 at 12:43 AM · View previous versions
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. Now with school done I can finally go out and shoot. Going tomorrow to look for some new places to shoot with extension tubes and a 55-250mm lens. 
