The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
One of my favourite (local) wild flowers growing here in Western Canada; the other being the Indian Paintbrush.
Specific Feedback
I cooled the the greens in this image because I didn’t want the warm colors of the bloom to compete with the warmish green tones. Does this work for you?
Technical Details
Canon EOS RP with the 90mm TS-E lens at f/5.6. Two images focus stacked to get most of the flower in focus.
Should I have gone for a deeper depth of field to get the near petals sharp as well? My thinking at the time of shooting this was that I didn’t necessarily want this image to be clinically/perfectly sharp but to rather have more of a dreamy feel to it.
Oh good, you have another view. I found some wild lilies next to the river yesterday, but it was so windy…I don’t know. But anyway…
For some reason I can’t enlarge this - the image just won’t load, so I’ll just talk about the small version. I like the composition, but wonder if the wb is a bit too warm. The only time I’ve photographed these I remember them being a cooler orange, almost red, but there could be variation. I think you have nice color separation in the petals, but you might be able to tease out more by cooling the wb. The focus looks good where it is and although having the nearest bits of the petals sharp is sometimes necessary, I don’t think it is here. These flowers are pretty big and so I don’t know if our eyes would necessarily have everything crisp in one view. So yeah, I think it works.
Just got the photo to open large and I see a bit of OOF petal to the left of the stamens on that back petal and maybe a bit more to the right on that back one, too. You could try some clone stamping from a bit of petal with texture and see if that works - the pattern on the petals might be hard to reproduce though. Could be worth a try. Lovely shot of a flower I rarely see.
This is lovely and dramatic! It is generally better to try to get closer elements in focus and let focus drop off in the back, but here I don’t mind the OOF petals as the lovely center draws all the attention. Nice job on the stack – the bits @Kris_Smith mentioned could be cloned. My first thought was about the WB – I’m not familiar with the flowers but the greens feel off. I did a Color Balance adjustment and just moved the Green-Magenta slider (midtones) to +5 and let it affect the flower as well, but the flower could be selected and masked out if necessary.
Kris, good catch on the OOF areas, I totally missed those! They were an artifact from the focus stack that PS just didn’t do a very good job with. I’ve not done many focus stacks and I completely missed this but it was easy enough to recover by doing a bit of masking.
Diane, I tried your colour balance tweak and I agree that it makes the greens look much better. That’s one of the things I wasn’t sure about so I appreciate your input.
Anyway, I’m uploading a new version that addresses these two issues. Thanks again!
Thanks again!