Taking picture of flowers in the wild

[ripli]

Camera Canon PowerShot S3 IS
Exposure 0.001 sec (1/1000)
Aperture f/3.5
Focal Length 21.9 mm
Exposure Bias 0 EV

Hello, it's my first post in here,
I think that this picture is a little bit boring..
any suggestion of improvement?

[sourav]

Welcome ripli.
To begin with, you should compose your shot, meaning, you should decide on a subject to shoot.
If I were to take this shot, I would focus on the nearest flower, use a low f number, and shoot a macro.
Or, get down to the level of the yellow flowers, choose a high f number and shoot a landscape.
In this pic, there is no clear subject. The eyes just wander about in the entire photograph, without resting on to anything.
You have a great camera, which has several priority modes. Try them out and keep clicking.
Hope this helps
Cheers.

[SwissJon]

Hi there and welcome to the forum..

This has real potential to be a lovely picture. I think the problem is what Saurav said.. You're lacking a subject..

Towards the bottom you see a triangle of 3 poppies? All three out of focus, they would have been the start of my composition here.. I think you should go back there and look for something similar, three poppies close together in a triangle. Three is a good number for groups, because however the triangle is composed, it's balanced. Choose three pretty poppies and try to make sure they don't overlap with each other or have anything in the way between you and them.

So, having found three poppies, angle your camera so that the they are around the bottom 1/3rd of the picture (See point 16 here 21 Settings, Techniques and Rules All New Camera Owners Should Know ) and you have a sea of reds and greens and yellows behind these poppies. Set your camera so that only the three poppies you're interested in are in focus, so everything else in the picture is thrown out of focus.. To do this, you need to set the aperture to be as small a number as your camera allows.. On your camera, you want to set it in Aperture Priority AE and set the aperture as low as it will go.. 2.7 is the minimum number I think. If you can't get this, zoom out and move closer, the number will go to that at the shortest focal length.

Now, when you have filled the frame with your chosen flowers.. Get clicking.

As an alternative, you could get down really low and shoot upwards with a bright sky behind.. You'll get a sillouette, but the petals of the poppy are slightly translucent, so you'll be able to see their colour still.

Happy clicking.

[ripli]

Thanks for the replies guys!