A couple of Flowers

[underexposed]

I'm very new to photography, and I would appreciate any advice on composition, exposure, etc.

Click on the picture for hi-res

I was told that this was a daylily

[windrider86]

Altho the flower itself is quite lovely the picture as a whole could use a little help. It has no depth of field. You want the flower to be your main focus. For that you could do one of two things: Edit the entire background by removing it and replacing it with something of a complimentary color or retake the photo using a different aperature setting to blur the background.
The colors could be brought out a bit more to show its natural beauty.
Does that help at all?

[underexposed]

Originally Posted by windrider86

Altho the flower itself is quite lovely the picture as a whole could use a little help. It has no depth of field. You want the flower to be your main focus. For that you could do one of two things: Edit the entire background by removing it and replacing it with something of a complimentary color or retake the photo using a different aperature setting to blur the background.
The colors could be brought out a bit more to show its natural beauty.
Does that help at all?

Hi windrider. Thanks for the comments. I'm just getting used to taking shots with varying DOF. And I keep reading that macros are better with a shallow DOF, and hence, a blurred background. This was taken at F2.7. I also could have gone a little bit closer, but that didn't allow the whole flower to fit in the frame.

As for the background, I was thinking the same. It's not the most ideal, and that dark part to the right is irking me. Since I wanted some external opinions, I posted the original picture. My image processing skills are zero. I would appreciate it if you could advice me on changing the background.