at the canal!

[kelly]

I was wearing my glasses this time! I hope it helped!

[clockdoc]

Not bad exposure-wise. I had a look at your largest image in flickr and that confirmed what I suspected as camera/subject movement. Shooting at 200+mm, even at a high shutterspeed, any motion of the camera or subject will be greatly magnified. The 'bullseye' centering of the flower is OK if you are documenting this for a text or reference website. However, you tend to see so many perfectly centered flower images these days that it really will take an exceptional shot to catch one's eye.

[praesentire]

Pretty flower. I like the depth of field and the colour contrast between the flower petals and the leaves.

As clockdoc had mentioned, motion blur is an enemy of macro shots. This becomes especially tough when the flower is very small and light and moves with the gentlest of breezes. I suggest either blocking the wind or even holding the stem to stabilize the subject.

There is not much interest in the right hand side of the frame apart from a blurred magenta of another flower. I think that takes the attention from the main subject. I would clone it out or crop that portion out. Had the camera been pointing slightly to the left, I think you could have gotten the entire top left leaf and kept out the magenta in the background.

If you have access to an editing software that gives you control over the levels and curves, try adjusting the black point of the blue channel in the 30-50 points range. You'll see that it will introduce some warmth to the picture and makes it feel even more inviting to the eyes.

Tip: Try upping the saturation setting on your XTi by +1 next time you want to shoot flowers. You'll see that the colours will come out brighter straight out of the camera.

I think you've done a great job of capturing this flower on ... err ... bytes. Thanks for sharing!