First close up photo and heavily processed..

[tyasa81]

Hi, this is my first close up photo i tried after getting interested in photography.. i used a d90 18-200 kit lens using aperture priority with widest lens setting at 200mm bracketting at +-1 EV.. processed it with HDR (cause i've read so much about it, and it did sound interesting) and bleach the background into B&W and saturate the color of the dried flower...I like to hear ppl's comment about it's composition and editting effects (is it too much?), what can i do to make it more interesting or natural? Thank you for all comments.. Trying to learn more..

[rumatamx]

Well for starters, those dried flowers in that context are uninteresting, i'd use one instead of two, and the one i'd use would be the bottom one without the protruding part on the right, next, i think the textures on the black and white part of the shot are mor interesting, although there is some hilight clipping which blows away any details, I feel you could do a better job in that aspect, since you shot various exposures and blend them together in an HDR fashion, also they could use more contrast, to make the textures stand out.

Sorry but to me this shot does not work.

[tyasa81]

Originally Posted by rumatamx

Well for starters, those dried flowers in that context are uninteresting, i'd use one instead of two, and the one i'd use would be the bottom one without the protruding part on the right, next, i think the textures on the black and white part of the shot are mor interesting, although there is some hilight clipping which blows away any details, I feel you could do a better job in that aspect, since you shot various exposures and blend them together in an HDR fashion, also they could use more contrast, to make the textures stand out.

Sorry but to me this shot does not work.

hey rumatamx,

thanx for the critique, this is one of the first few photos i took with my dslr...maybe a few days of reading in the net (this website has really good tips) and i just grabbed something from my room to test it out... i've been looking at the critique forums and just want to get a little taste of what it feels like and learn from it...i've been taking more pictures over the past few days and hopefully i'll learn a little more in the process....

i wasn't controlling light very well and used an emergency flashlight (the box type) to light it coz i did most of the photo taking late at night in my room...looking at it again, the light does looks harsh n take some of the highlights...anyway...thanks for the critique...i do learn more from it..

anyway i've been told by some to increase contrast in a black and white photo, is there somewhere on the web that teach u how to do this? is contrast in this sense making the black blacker and the white whiter? i dont really understand this very well...

[rumatamx]

Yes high contrast aims to make the dark areas darker and the bright areas brighter.