Looking down on the photo showing the STALK in the BG is kind of ruining it for me.
I'd say Bad Angle
But you get a B+ for effort
But then again>>>
What the heck do I know about floral photography
Anthony
Thanks for feedback. In processing I tried to clean up back ground but was not happy with flower color. Think your right, this is next to my work and will retry / improve.
The first image looks great Keith. But I prefer if you could bring out more details in the petals. The whites seems to me bit washed out. Very nice capture and I like it.
Interesting flower the Cleome is. I was taking a look at mine trying to figure out a good shot. Not so easy on this flower, I opted to wait and discuss my shot with the 'Floral King' Mr Ant Whitmo
Keith, great efforts, I think it is going to take a much more diffused soft light on this flower and a seamless soft BG too. These should bloom out more pink or pink and white petals to help give a fuller flower. Will be worth some more shots to get a great one, keep at it and nice to see a flower shot
This flower presents some interesting challenges. The greatest is that the petals and stamens are all higgeldy-piggeldy, which results in some being in focus, and some not, and also in some facing directly into the sun and some facing away. If you step back and stop down, you bring more of the BG into focus, which would add clutter. So tht doesn't work.
It might be interesting to isolate on one petal that's not directly reflecting sunlight. Getting in close would enable you to stop your lens down to bring out petal texture without bringing in the stalk or other leaves. You could experiment with a petal isolated against OOF greenery or against the softened color of other OOF petals.
There are also probably some interesting minimalist shots of just the pollen ends of the stamens along with the stalk of the stamen in focus against a nicely blurred BG.
An interesting flower, offers lots of interesting approaches. Hope you'll continue to pursue some and post your results.
Keith -- I disagree with Mt Ant and agree with Mr Jude. So there you go ...
Overall I agree with Jenna
What I like about the image is the fact that the stem remains in the BG ... to me the petals make the shot. But as Jude said I'd like to see more detail and make them sharper to pop. You could have closed the lens further to incerease DOF.
cheers,
-meerec
