Pink Flower In The Afternoon

[ArmySoldier777]

Hello everyone,

I'm really trying to improve on my nature photography. I love taking pictures of flowers, but I'm still trying to take it to the next level. This flower is one that I took a picture of this afternoon when the lighting conditions weren't exactly the greatest due to surrounding trees and the shade coming off of my house, but I made an attempt to see what I could do anyway. I believe I had better images in my set, of other flowers i'd photographed today, but i chose this one so that I could receive some real critique on it to improve my abilities. I'll post the image below along with the information pertaining to the shot, as well as a link to the full-size image if you'd prefer to see it instead.

Edit: I realized I never asked an actual question, so here goes. (1) Due to the poor lighting conditions from all the surrounding shade, what could I have done to improve the lighting of this shot? If anything? (2) What do you think of the focus of this particular shot? I used autofocus to allow the camera to choose what it thought appropriate, then i switched to manual focus and used the live view screen to zoom in to small details on the flower and correct the focus from there. (3) Different aperture settings for a different DOF? Or do you think the the DOF works well for this image? (4) Color/Contrast. Would you do anything different with either of these to give the flower a better appearance? (5) Composure. Was I able to compose the shot well enough to really display the flower as it should be?

I appreciate any and all replies. Thanks in advance to everybody,
David

Camera Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
Date/Time: 2011:06:08 15:59:36
Resolution: 2047 x 1453
Flash Used: Yes (manual)
Lens: 55-250mm
Focal Length: 146.0mm (35mm equivalent: -21...
Exposure Time: 0.0063 s (1/160)
Aperture: f/7.1
Focus Dist.: 1.26m
ISO Equiv.: 100
Whitebalance: Auto
Metering Mode: matrix
Exposure: Manual
Exposure Mode: Auto bracketing



Full Sized Image: Plants :: IMG_0008.jpg picture by Stormchaser2o11 - Photobucket

[Vernian]

Hi

Its a beautiful flower you have here, but I think the lighting is particularly flat, though I think most of that comes from the flash rather than the surrounding area. Now I am NOT an expert at flash so I cannot give you exact instructions, I just know from my own photos that this flat bright sort of photo often occurs when you use on-camera flash close up - maybe look into getting a diffuser? I'm sure one of our experts can give you more info on this (or completely refute me! :-)

2) The focus looks ok to me, it would be nice to have the "front" petals also in focus, but with as shallow a DOF as you have here I think its better to have the back petals in focus.

3) I love the soft background you've got here, so the DOF looks great to me.

4) I've had a quick play with it and if you do some curve adjustments you can improve the colour and the contrast to make it look more "real". I'd also up the contrast a little.

5) I like the composition - its not just another front on flower and you show a little of the environment, but not enough to be a distracting background. This kind of flower usually have a pistil or stamen in the "throat" so it would have been nice to have either of those as well,but overall I think its a nice capture.

[ArmySoldier777]

Vernian,

First of all, I'd like to say thank you for the compliments.

I also agree on the lighting, I knew that would be one of the things that would be brought to attention. I tried a mix of different things when post processing the Raw file, "Recovery tool, lessening the highlights, a few other tricks I usually use" and I just couldn't seem to fix the flash problem without the image looking dull. Now that I think about it, I suppose I could've just applied a Levels layer as an overlay to bring out the contrast in the image after lessening the light, but I didn't. However, I did play with the curves a little bit and I believe it did help bring out the image a little better. I've been using photoshop for a very long time, and there's a lot I can do with it as far as post processing images is concerned, but for some reason I never bothered with the Curves tool.. lol. So, I just spent about 5 minutes testing out all the settings until I knew the basics of it. I'll attach the image below to see if you think it could still use some more work.

I agree that I would have liked the front petal to be in focus, but due to the poor lighting conditions and already having to bring out the on-board camera flash, I didn't want to close the aperture any more than I needed to. I could have made up for it with lengthening the exposure, but I didn't want to sacrifice image sharpness for something that I might've been able to correct in post processing. I guess when you don't have all the right equipment, sometimes you have to sacrifice one thing for another..

I appreciate all your feedback, the things you liked, and the things that I could improve on. Thank you for taking out the time to let me know what you think. That's how we learn.

David