Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Hot off the presses! I went out Sunday morning before I had seen the weekly challenge looking for my forest wildflower of the year. I was successful in finding some.
Specific Feedback
Buttercups are so waxy and shiny that it’s sometimes hard to keep from blowing out the shiny spots, but this one was backlit, so I figured that might help. I always wonder how these macro shots are perceived since they expose some texture and detail that our eyes can not pick up. It sort of renders it sparkly. Is that a bad thing? It was a little breezy, so the flower moved a fair bit, but it moved as a unit and Helicon aligns things fairly well. There are few sort of starburst artifacts that I think may be a result of this. Also, the background was dark, but I darkened it even more. Do you think I went too far? I found the brown grass and other organic debris to be a little distracting, even when out of focus.
Technical Details
Nikon Z8
Sigma 105 Macro f/2.8
ISO 64, f/5.6, 1/1000th
84 images stacked in Helicon Focus. This flower is somewhere between 1/2" and 3/4" wide. I was as close as minimum focus distance would allow, so the depth of field for each image is pretty tiny! I like the way it renders the background though, so I go for fairly large apertures. In this case, 5.6 was as large as possible for the proximity.