Open crocus

[Angling]

Seems like Crocus season here!

Today the natural light was fantastic, a clear blue sky. I have been waiting for these little critters to open fully to get a shot and today was that day, not a breath of air to move them.

I am working on my Macro phots at the moment (last few days) because I love the fine detail you can get but I am having trouble cropping this image. I am very green to photography and am trying the thirds rule, however it never seems to work out for me, any ideas please and other pointers to improve the image.

My data
Total Novice
Nikon D40
f/5.6
1/320
ISO 200
Focal length 55mm
Hand held shot

[LeePotter]

Really NICE!

[oriolhdz]

Hi Angling:
I had almost finished my comments when lights went out. =(
I will resume what I wrote. The lightening in your photo is great and DOF is good too. About what you said of the rules of thirds well, your subjects (the flower in the bottom center and the flower next to it's right) are both at the horizontal imaginary line of the rules of thirds, but no flower is at the intersection on the vertical lines. You can crop it to fix that and use some blur to bring even more attention to your subject. I played with your photo to try to explain myself better and here is what I got. I just cropped and blur it in Photoshop.

You can also do other thinks like adding a vignette or doing selective color. It's a great shot definitely. I bet you that in a higher size impress more.
Thanks for sharing it!
Good luck!

[annie12]

Lovely shot - lovely crocus crop too!!

Think the crop could improve it - from my untrained eye it seems less distracting to look at but I love the way the shadows seem to dance across the petals.

Well done!

[Angling]

Thank you very much for the feed back. I had not considered blurring the infocus flowers to help with the composition, great tip, thanks.

I must admit I liked the top left and right corners where they fade out quite dark, one with a green hue and the other with brown hues but is see the improvements with your crop!

What is a vaginette (however it's spelt) I thought it was salad dressing!

I look forward to some more critiques

EDIT: here is my version using the feedback so far. I think I was a little heavy with the blur brush!

[JFSanders]

No, you were not too heavy with the blur brush. Now your picture has a central subject and it pops out of the background. When you are shooting a shot like this it is like a portrait shot.

Vignetting is the darkening and abstraction/blurring of the image surrounding the subject.

I like your edited image. It shows your subject but conveys a larger context. It is a happy flower.

Next time you shoot a subject try to determine what it is about the scene that makes you want to make the picture then start eliminating all things that distract from that. Then determine from what veiwpoint helps you tell others what you are seeing.

It is a whole lot easier to write that than to accomplish it. And if you aren't making pictures you will never get a good one so shoot a thousand a week if you can.

[peeperita]

thank you for a good presentation.....

you're re-edit is stunning and once again proof of the value of critique....it's always great for me to see the progression of another member....

thanks for sharing

peeper

[Angling]

Thank you for your comments. I have learnt a lot from this one thread and I look forward to posting some more images in the future!