The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
We are often oscillating between two extremes: Focus Stacking, with its details that remind me of classic illustrations of nature wonders (think of Ernst Haeckel just to name one) - and fluffy, impressionist worlds associated with a very shallow depth-of-field. Here, I went back to my original passion for the second kind of vision and immersed myself and the camera at an… ant’s viewpoint. Anemonoides nemorosa, in the woods around my house, in a moist area on the side of a small stream, on the second day of Spring of this year (yesterday)…
Specific Feedback
any feedback is welcome
Technical Details
Fuji x-H2, Fuji 80/2.8 macro, ISO 200, f/4.5, 1/200 s, camera, lens and photographer lying in the mud…
This is gorgeous, Antonello. I don’t think a “realistic” view could covey the feeling of this at all, so I think you made the best choice to go for shallow depth of field and let the rest be so airy and full of spring. The composition with the out of focus flower arching across the frame really works well for my taste.
Antonello: I love shallow DOF work as well. We used to call it cramming to shoot through FG foliage with a wide open aperture to isolate one small feature. I’m not totally enamored with the crop with the flower “looking” right and so much room on the left. A tighter crop from the left and some from the top brings the main subject a bit more to the fore for me. The color palette and softness though are top notch. >=))>
Thanks @Dennis_Plank , @Shirley_Freeman , @Bill_Fach , @Susanna_Euston for your comments! I see the point of Bill’s crop and like it - on the other hand, I also like to have the whole out-of-focus flower - was going back and forth between the two options without deciding which one I like most
Hi Antonello,
I suspect you’ll debate which one you prefer for years to come. It’s a lovely, airy image, with a spring-like high key element. I do like the more singular focus of Bill’s crop. I might even trim a bit more off the left, thereby reducing the feel of a partial flower.
Here’s an effort at that. I’m not sure I like it better as now we lose some of that lovely, airy, gauzy background in the upper right.
@Marylynne_Diggs Thanks Marylynne! I like also your crop - which shows, once more, that pictures have more than one life and that the “best version” depends on who is looking at it and maybe also on the mood and feelings of the same viewer in different moments… This is one of the joys of photography, I think. Even without manipulating the image, what we choose, what we exclude can generate thousands of different visions…
Hi Antonello,
I love this image, it has such an etherial feel to it. The colors are fresh and appealing , the movement with the slightly out of focus flower bending around the main focal point adds to the overall feel.
Good work!!
Alice
What a beautifully soft and dreamy frame. The little anemone glows like a candle in fog, with that delicate green eye and the tiny yellow stamens providing just enough crispness to give the shallow focus something to anchor on. The surrounding leaves dissolve into pale ghosts of themselves, and the whole thing reads like a half remembered woodland from a fairy tale rather than a botanical record. Lovely work.
I have to laugh at your description of oscillating between the two extremes, because I am living in exactly the same pendulum. One week I am building elaborate stacks and worshipping at the altar of Haeckel, every stamen accounted for, every hair in focus, the image practically a scientific plate. The next week I throw all that overboard, open the aperture as wide as it will go, and chase little luminous blurs through the undergrowth like a person who has just discovered watercolor for the first time. There seems to be no middle ground available, and I have made peace with the fact that I will probably keep swinging between the two until the end of my photographic days.
I also share your enthusiasm for direct contact with the soil. Getting down to ant level is, in my experience, the only honest way to photograph a small flower, and it does come with the small indignity of standing back up afterward looking like one has been wrestling. My laundry has firm opinions about my hobby, and the hikers who occasionally find me face down in a ditch with a camera have firmer opinions still. But the images we get from down there have a tenderness that no upright shot can match, so the mud stays on the trousers and the dignity stays in the car.
A really lovely frame, and a perfect ode to the impressionist side of the seesaw. Thank you for sharing it.
@sebastien-maloron , I found your description perfect and it definitely made me smile… Too much mud on clothes, and too many perplexed faces when I meet some hikers… but still, so nice to be there and immerse oneself in the natural world. And yes, I also did not find any intermediate solution between the impressionistic vision and the botanical plate approach… Oh well. So are things.
@Marylynne_Diggs , I agree - all the solutions have their value, and often - I found for myself - depends on our mood, momentary feelings, and so on…
Your and @sebastien-maloron 's poetic descriptions brought to my mind Oscar Wilde’s quote: " We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars". I’ll just add my vote for your original crop, showing an elegant combination of really blurred flower and a more focused one. A matter of taste only, this preference. I really like the shot a lot, especially the colors.
Thanks Mike for your comment! And I do like the quote of Oscar Wilde… in this case we “look at the mud” which in some cases may be even more interesting than the stars (perhaps…). At least, it is full of life! One of my friends is a soil scientist, and she is happy like a child when she can dig in the ground and emerge covered with dirt and mud…
If I may repeat a previous comment… Gorgeous! I too love the “cramming” or the concept of utilizing depth of field and out of focus elements to add color, shapes and organizing a composition. This is beautifully conceived and crafted.
I also thought of the crop as the main flower appears unbalanced to the right. But then without further reading and descriptions of others, I realized the brilliant inclusion of the second, or background flower you included. Clearly intentional I now realize. It took a moment of two, but when I realized the inclusion of the flower, it’s form, etc., the entire story of your image came through.
I do really like Bill’s interpretation as the secondary flower still has a presence. In the end, your original presentation has a mastery to it that went beyond our traditional views of composition. Kudos!
