(If the background has been replaced, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
I took this photo last summer.With a 16mm Nikon Camera
Beautiful flower, and I like how you’ve handled the dynamic range. The image is quite soft, however. Did you focus manually? Also, a small point: I wouldn’t have clipped off part of the bud in the lower left corner.
Barbara: Welcome to NPN and thanks for posting an image of one of my favorite flowers. Osteospermum are early risers in our garden so I look forward to their appearance every spring. Like Ron mentioned this is pretty soft, especially in the center. Most of the time the small details in flowers should be sharp. This is an image I took earlier this year and even though I added some texture you can see the sharpness in the centers.
As far as your composition, I like the centered arrangement for a single symmetrical bloom like this. You could crop it even tighter and eliminate the buds altogether for a different take. Lastly, when you post you should resize your images to a much smaller size. We generally recommend about 1500 pixels on the longest side of the image. Posting full size images takes up a lot of server space and makes it easy for would be image pirates to copy your full resolution file. It’s great to have you aboard. This is a great place to learn through posting yourself and examining and critiquing other’s images. Keep 'em coming. >=))>I love the leafy background, Barbara, and the exposure looks very good. The flower itself seems to be out of focus. This is easy to have happen if you’re shooting down at a flower. For some reason, after I get the focus I find myself bending further toward the flower and throwing it out of focus. Therefore, I almost always use a tripod for flowers.
