Critique my photo

[rgoodwin]

I took this by accident. I put my AF-S 18-105 mm 1:3.5-5.6G ED lens from my Nikon N80
on my nikon D90. Upon seeing this flower I got up close and clicked, all in auto.

[windrider86]

Do you have anything specific you'd like to ask?

[rgoodwin]

Just asking peoples to critique it, what could I have done better?
Just general input

[CiiVii]

Well, to take better photos take them with purpose, not by accident.

This one is out of focus, has too small depth of field, and the composition is uninteresting. That's what you get by accident...

[rgoodwin]

Thank you, that is what I am looking for.

[PamV]

That is a nice flower picture. Very nice blurry background.

A depth of field would have been good to get the whole flower in focus. The very tip of the top petal is bent which puts it outside the area of focus. The bottom petals are out of focus. (You could pretend this is on purpose).

As for composition; you could have taken the picture so the top petal was at the top of the picture and the left petal at the left edge. Or do the same with the other corners. This would put the center of you flower close to one of the positions recommended by the ‘rule of threes’.

You can mess with the composition of the picture you have by cropping. How about putting the bottom petals in the lower left corner. Chop them off about half way. Crop the left side of the picture to slice a little of the left upper petal off. This would put the center of the flower in the lower of the picture and keep that bent upper petal that I like (even if it is out of focus).

Please experiment with cropping your nice flower. Put it in different corners with different crops. Use just the middle of the flower. Be sure to save the original separately. Who knows what you might want to do to it in the future.

PS, some great photos have been by accident.

[LeeR]

First, congratulations on doing a great job of separating the subject from the background. That's the first thing I noticed about this image. Because the flower is in sharp focus and literally the entire background is not, you have great the feeling that the flower is extending toward us a very desirable trait in an image.
However, let me suggest that there are three things every beginner needs to learn about processing images that will improve their images immensely. (You are going to need either Photoshop or GIMP to do these things. Since GIMP is free you have no excuse not to be using it!)
First, you need to do a levels adjustment. This will allow you to make dramatic improvements to the image simply by adjusting the tonal range and 'gamma'. You can watch a video on how to use it here.
After that, you need to crop the image. You are going to have to be brutal here; if it isn't absolutely necessary for your image, get rid of it. Good video on this here. Now, before I go on, let me warn you that you are going to hear a lot about the use of 'negative space', that is large areas that appear to be empty yet play an important role in the image. Please consider this an advanced concept you can master later, right now you need to learn to master cropping to the point where you are doing it in the camera rather than in post processing.
Third and last (for now) is sharpening. There are two popular methids for doing this; one is called "unsharp mask", and the other is called "high pass filter." I don't care which you use, but you need to become a master of one and it needs to be the last thing you do before either printing or posting the image.
Those three things will make a profound difference in your images. I agree with those before me who are telling you to do a better job in the camera, there is substitute for good camera work, but I also think there are things you can do in PP that will help as well. Here, for example, is what I got using the tools I just suggested:

[rgoodwin]

Thank you very much. I watched the suggested videos, and will take your and every one else advice. Yes I have a long way to go in this camera learning adventure. But it is fun!

[nrkiran]

very useful post,
posts like these will tell newcomers like us to learn a lot
thank you