Sunflower Macro

[Nicole Hanna]

Sunflower is absolutely my favorite flower. I bought a few for Mother's Day and attempted to plant them... failed attempt I might add, but managed to get a few shots before I... uh.... killed it. Used a cross process preset in Lightroom, then some minor alterations to contrast, clarity and exposure.

Nikon D90
Tamron 90mm Macro
Aperture f/4.0
ISO 250
SS 1/100

[IMG] Sunflower Deep Color Backlight by Nicole Hanna, on Flickr[/IMG]

[alphavalues]

I like the composition and the way the blue lines come out from between the petals on the rear flower.

I'd like to see the large petal on the left side of the front flower in focus with rest of those petals. Also, you've lost almost all the texture on the seedy part - maybe a little bit of dodge on it?

[Nicole Hanna]

Thanks for commenting!

I tried dodging it a bit to bring out the detail, but then it softened the section so much it seemed out of place in a heavily contrasted photo. There was a whole exposure issue at play here because it was incredibly sunny... almost to the point that I thought photographing anything was a bad idea. Plus my focus was on the petals, so I didn't mind losing the detail on the center. The out of focus petals to the left are a bit of a point of contention with me as well. Still working on a few focusing issues I'm having with my settings.

I appreciate your opinions. I might have to revisit the photo to work on the dodging. I didn't have Lightroom at the time when I originally edited this and, since getting Lightroom, haven't revisited any old photos, so perhaps now is the time to do so.

[alphavalues]

To get a deeper depth of field, try closing the aperture farther - looks like you were at f4, so maybe 5.6 to 8 and then slow the shutter down. Shouldn't be a problem if it's sunny.

Keep up the good work