critique me please

[Juljay]

Hi im new to this site just got a d40x a week or 2 ago (early xmas gift from my boyfriend) just want you opinions on if im doing the camera justice.

[mappleby]

I like this image, the subtleness of it and the reflection in the water. The placement of the yellow of the flower is great, however I think for me I would like to see the yellow punched up a notch or two. Like I said the placement is great it just needs to be more striking.

Anyway that's just me two cents.

[FrankenPengie]

This could do with more light and DOF. I like how the attention is on how the flower is sitting on the water.

[bigdoggold]

Hi and welcome to an awesome site. There are some really good photographers that post on here. Also everyone is very nice.

With that said...

I think this image is good, I like the reflection on the water, it adds a nice touch to the image. I also like the water drops on the pedals of the flower. I would have liked to see more of the flower in the picture, but maybe that would have not allowed for the reflection.

Nice job and enjoy the new camera...way to be a Nikon Shooter..lol I love Nikon's


Have fun and happy "snapping"

[Jboy]

I actually really like the composition. Even though you don't see the whole flower, you do see its entire reflection, so I don't miss the part that you cropped. Maybe, zooming out just a little bit would've helped- give the flower more room. The little bit of blurred background on the left looks great, so I don't think you needed to get so close.

I do agree that a greater DOF and contrast (Maybe levels? Take a look at the histogram) would help, but more importantly I think you should make your subject clear. Right now, the reflection is very crisp, but the flower itself isn't, even though your composition places the flower in that upper right corner everyone's talking about. I think it would've been better to focus on that instead, or increase the DOF. Before I saw the full resolution image I was thinking to myself "Why didn't anyone say that the lens is dirty...?" because the out-of-focus water droplets looked like they were on the lens rather than on the flower. Also, if you increased the contrast on the center of the flower you could draw more attention to the nice yellow tones.

... Despite that small rant about DOF (I get carried away easily), I overall very much like the image. Do you mind if I try playing with it in PS? (I can't figure out how to get nice macro shots like that myself :P)

[Juljay]

Thank you so much every one on all your input its giving me great insight on what I need to think of first when taking a picture. This site is great inspiration for my creativity I have learned so much already, I hope to learn so much more. Please feel free to edit this shot in any way you feel fit.

[Jboy]

This may be overkill, but here's my shot at post-processing:



Basically, there are four layers: (1) the base layer, (2) a mask of the flower and its reflection set to "Multiply" under "Blending Modes," (3) a duplicate layer blurred and set to "screen," and (4) a duplicate of the base layer with a high pass filter set to "soft light" to sharpen the image.

I have no idea if this is the kind of thing you were after but I hope it helps :D

[FrankenPengie]

Originally Posted by Juljay

Thank you so much every one on all your input its giving me great insight on what I need to think of first when taking a picture. This site is great inspiration for my creativity I have learned so much already, I hope to learn so much more. Please feel free to edit this shot in any way you feel fit.

Thanks for the okay to play.

The picture needed some overall clarity to adjust for the smaller DOF so I started by creating a new layer with the in-focus parts by lassoing them with a 20 feather. I did some Unsharp Mask on the whole image and the new layer treating them separately. Then I flattened the picture again, lassoed the yellow center and used the unsharp mask on it.

I liked the coloring but it needed a little depth and contrast. I shifted a little towards a bluer hue to play on the blue spot in the upper left. I did some tiny curves adjustments on each channel, then squeezed the levels on each channel to match histogram, and adjusted the center marker a tad. Moving on to brightness, contrast, I bumped up the contrast which showed I needed to darken it a bit to avoid blowing out the whites. Lasso the center yellow chunk again and up the contrast.

You can't really compensate for lack of DOF but you can give a picture more clarity. Sharpening tools tend to show their mark when you reach a certain point.

[goshort]

yr effort is a good one to use a different angle. the black below and white up make a good composition. i hope u will go on clicking and show us more of yr different work nature.