My first post!

[Learn2C]

Hi There,

We were on a beautiful hike and I came across a nice meadow of these flowers. Have been working on composition and not sure how I am doing. Would appreciate some advise on how I could have improved image. I only adjusted the contrast. Exif data is as follows:
Manual setting
F/6.7
ISO 200
1/90 second
0.0 EV
Focal length 200mm


Thank you,

[Glendezza]

I did reply once to this...not sure if I screwed up or it was deleted... But just wanted to say that my first post on here was ignored aswell and wanted to reply to yours. I liked your composition, especially with the two flowers behind it at varying degrees of focus.

[mrteacherdude]

I really like the colors and bokeh in this image; there is something about the combination of red and green that appeals to me (reminds me of Christmas perhaps). To my eye it looks like you have good focus on the flower in the forefront, which becomes, or seems like it should be, the focal point of the image. Overall I find your image quite pleasing, but something about the composition and/or image is not screaming at me to keep paying attention to it even though I really want to.

The foreground flower has good detail and what seems to be good focus, but it's not really talking to me and not really showing me what its got. I can see seed pods and remnants of reproductive structures on the ends of the pods. I can see hairy structures within the flower. I can see the edges of the petals and interesting lines on the petals. But I have to work at it a bit to see all that. My eyes are not tending to rest anywhere and have a strong tendency to leave the frame.

In really trying to pay attention to what my eyes are doing, it seems they are being drawn to the lower left portion of the frame as it is a little brighter/contrasty there, and there is sufficient detail that my eyes lock onto the stems and follow them out right out of the frame instead of up into the flower.

I don't know if it would improve the photo or not, but perhaps a tighter crop around the flowers such that the frame is filled mostly with flower would eliminate much of the stem and draw attention back to the flower. Macro or closeup shots seem to need the frame filled with the subject matter of interest. Too much detail beyond that tends to become distracting (unless it is a very very tiny subject and the other "stuff" around it lends context to the image). The plain greenish background in your image is fine because it is very smooth. If we start backing away from the object some, then it seems like it is better to include much more of the scene. I think it is similar to taking pictures of people. If you take a head shot, you don't want to include too much image beyond the head and shoulders as I think we begin looking for more information past that, and it just doesn't look right if it's not there. If we back away a little to take a body shot, then we need to include enough of the body that it makes sense or our brains can comfortably fill in the rest of the image (crops at joints tend to not be good). I'm hoping this makes sense in regards to looking at macro shots. Fill the frame with the small subject to get the macro/closeup, or back away to include more of the scene.

Another thought is that your image looks a little underexposed to me. In real life I tend to prefer low light conditions and enjoy the way things look; thus I have a strong tendency to underexpose images. But then those images just don't look right when I look at them on screen or when I print them out. When other people look at my images, they are most attracted to those that are bright and/or have a lot of contrast in them; just the way the human eye and brain typically works. So I find that I have to brighten up and increase the contrast in a lot of my images, sometimes considerably to the point where I know that wasn't really the way it looked in the field; our eyes/brain seem to adjust much better in real life than they do to a static image of life.

You mentioned that you adjusted the contrast. I'm not sure what increasing the contrast even more to your image would do, but you might give it a shot to see what happens. A levels adjustment might do wonders for it as well to bring out the detail in the foreground flower. Other things you might try is increasing the brightness and saturation. I would be careful of the saturation though. Try a number of different things to see if you can get the flower in the foreground to "pop" without looking strange or out of place compared to the rest of the image.

Please keep in mind that these are merely suggestions (which is what you asked for) from what I am seeing in your image right now in the current lighting conditions of my office, my somewhat limited experience in photography, and my interpretation of what you are attempting to convey with your image. Others may see it entirely different and offer other suggestions.

Keep shooting beautiful things!

BTW - try not to get bummed if people don't respond to your post. Sometimes posts come up so quickly other people can't keep up with them and they quickly get to the bottom of lists. And sometimes it's just difficult to come up with something to provide feedback about, especially if the image seems to be pretty solid to begin with. Hope all of this helps in some way.

[cgibbs]

I like your image and agree with the previous poster that it is a nice image with pretty colors and interesting DOF, but doesn't grab me. Maybe could benefit from some cropping to reframe the area that is the focus. What I notice from bottom to top (or top to bottom) is a band of green, band of red, band of green again. I think it might be interesting to try to crop the bottom band of green out as I find the flowers and above to be the most interesting. Maybe making the area of focus slightly off-centered would be interesting to try here too. Just my unprofessional opinion.

[Learn2C]

Thank you to everyone for your advice on how I could have made the image a bit better. Honestly, I love the CC as it is the only way a newbie can learn I am going to try some of the suggestions!

Cheers,
Carrie