Sunlit Fern

[Elroy]

Hi All,
i took a photo of a fern on the weekend at Mt Tomaree, Nelson Bay, NSW, AUS.

It was a quick passing shot as i was huffing and puffing up the hill. When i looked at it later, i realised i should have slowed down and set the shot up properly.

I am after your opinion on the composition, DOF, and lighting (natural sunlight). I'm hoping to venture up there again soon and nail this shot for a frame or canvas. Personally it think i set the DOF too small (f2.8). Any other critique is welcome.

Note - this photo was taken with 17-55, and i don't own a macro lens. minimal post processing, contrast, sharpen, highlight reduction.

Because of the out of focus corners, i've tried a square crop and post processing in iphoto just for ideas. will have a go on lightroom later.





Cheers
Roy

[dlambert]

I'm not positive what it is about the fern that you want me to see. The composition works reasonably-well as a macro shot, but I think you'd want a little more precision in DOF and focus for a macro. That sort of shot sort of has to be all about stunning you with details.

If you're going for a "shaft of light in the dark forest" look, I think the tight composition might be fighting this. It almost looks artificially-lit -- as if you lit the fern w/ a strobe and left the background underexposed. There just isn't enough background to put the fern in any kind of context. If you re-shoot, think about what made you want to take the picture in the first place -- what was it about the fern that made you stop and look at it again?

I can relate to those "huffing & puffing" shots - they're tough. I've got a thousand shots I've taken while hiking, and they rarely come out looking stunning when I don't take the time to think through the composition of the shot. The more of them I take, though, the more I'm able to visualize what's likely to work and what's not, and I'm getting faster at that, too, which helps a lot. One of the things I've been working on pretty deliberately is getting away from eye-level shooting. I went hiking last weekend and came home with over 500 shots. I did a quick ranking & editing pass in Lightroom and uploaded a dozen of them to my gallery. Looking back at these now, at least half of these were taken crouched down or on my knees, or climbing up on something or other. Very few of my eye-level shots were remarkable.