colorful flower

[Rshuler]

Camera Nikon D50
Exposure 0.003 sec (1/320)
Aperture f/8.0
Focal Length 200 mm
ISO Speed 800 ( Not sure why!! )

Critques on composition, contrast, and sharpening, and hell. any cropping ideas would be helpful...

[JFSanders]

R, The contrast and colors are fine. The composition is what everyone does. Look down shoot down. Meh. The large OOF stem on the right is killing your photograph and a different perspective would have allowed you to eliminate it out of the photograph without cropping. How close was your distance to subject? As far as why 800 ISO that is probably a auto ISO setting in camera and it chose it to allow the f/8 aperture at 200mm. What lens were you using? Here is my suggestion for cropping.

Jim

[Rshuler]

I was about 5 feet away with full zoom! I was using the only lens I have which is a 55-200mm zoom kit lens which is mounted on a Nikon D50. I shot it in AP mode set at f/8 in full shade... The whole picture was about the color at the center... Which in turn blined me to any other thing in the frame.. (Still learning on how to look at the whole picture)
The cropping you did works well thanks for the tip...