I have been in awe of the wonderful blue bell pictures from the European members. The closest thing around where I live to the blue bells are cowslips which are a lovely yellow flower that grows in marshes in the Spring. These marshes or less pleasantly called cedar swamps are lit up right now with cowslips. Here are some examples:

Hey Steve,

Those are some very pretty flowers! Especially in #1 and 2, but to some degree in all of the shots, the sky looks wierd, some wierd blue colors going on, and a lot of blurryness. Did you blend in a bracketed shot up there in place of a blown out sky? The compositions in #1 and 2 and the best as far as the flowers go, #3 and 4 I hate to say it, they have more of the feel of just a snapshot. Shooting flowers like that to me is very difficult, you really have to work and think and look at the patterns created by the clumping of the flowers, and really watch the edges of your frames, trying as much as you can to not cut flowers off...

As for #1, which to me has the best flower arrangement, I would actually crop off all of the sky, and just let it be a square forest shot.

Jim

Steve, you found a terrific cluster of beautiful yellow blooms. My thoughts are possibly since the subject is the flowers maybe they should have been shot at a closer range and even eliminated much or most of the bg. For me the interest is in the blooms and remainder of the scene is not that appealing. I think one has to really look at a complete scene before composiing and shooting.
Randy

Beautiful flowers, indeed. I agree with Jim's and Randy's thoughts.
I'd also suggest to reduce the file sizes to @150-200 K max. These took quite a while to open.

Barry

JimFox wrote:
Hey Steve,

Those are some very pretty flowers! Especially in #1 and 2, but to some degree in all of the shots, the sky looks wierd, some wierd blue colors going on, and a lot of blurryness. Did you blend in a bracketed shot up there in place of a blown out sky? The compositions in #1 and 2 and the best as far as the flowers go, #3 and 4 I hate to say it, they have more of the feel of just a snapshot. Shooting flowers like that to me is very difficult, you really have to work and think and look at the patterns created by the clumping of the flowers, and really watch the edges of your frames, trying as much as you can to not cut flowers off...

As for #1, which to me has the best flower arrangement, I would actually crop off all of the sky, and just let it be a square forest shot.

Jim

Hi Jim,

I very much appreciate your honest feedback. I did struggle with the compositions a fair bit and your advice is sound. I think I may have shot them a bit too wide angle (they were shot at 10mm on a 1.6 crop camera) making it difficult to compose so that I didn't cut off flowers somewhere. I know I can do better and will focus on that more next time I shoot. With regard to the sky, I think what you are seeing is that I used a polarizer because the leaves of these flowers are quite shiny and at the ultra-wide angle it of course can cause some problems with blues in the sky. That, and the dynamic range was pretty extreme (even though it was less than an hour after sunrise) in this dark swamp compared to the bright sky. I didn't use a blend, (it is a single shot) but I did have to use some fairly heavy highlight recovery and I suspect the amount of data is the sky is not what it should be. I will try to shoot again this weekend and try a longer focal length and I will be much more careful with the composition. Thanks so much for your helpful feedback.

Steve

Randy Walton wrote:
Steve, you found a terrific cluster of beautiful yellow blooms. My thoughts are possibly since the subject is the flowers maybe they should have been shot at a closer range and even eliminated much or most of the bg. For me the interest is in the blooms and remainder of the scene is not that appealing. I think one has to really look at a complete scene before composiing and shooting.
Randy


Hi Randy,

Thank you for your advice. It is nice to know even when you struggle that the people here are willing to offer helpful advice.

Best wishes,

Steve

bshamilton wrote:
Beautiful flowers, indeed. I agree with Jim's and Randy's thoughts.
I'd also suggest to reduce the file sizes to @150-200 K max. These took quite a while to open.

Barry

Hi Barry,

I am sorry about the file sizes. I think the slowness might have to do with the servers at my work that I use for the files. Normally it is very fast (I teach at a big university) but something is much slower than normal today, but I will also make the files smaller and repost them. Thanks for your kind comment about the flowers.

Best wishes,

Steve

Nice series. These flowers are called Kingcups or Marsh Marigolds in the UK.

After all the useful advice, I tried a crop along the lines that Jim and Randy suggested. Here it is:

Nezza wrote:
Nice series. These flowers are called Kingcups or Marsh Marigolds in the UK.

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the encouragement. I also always enjoy hearing the different names for flowers in different parts.

Best wishes,

Steve