Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
We were at Gilbert Water Park, Arizona. I was interested in getting images of birds seen here only in the winter, but when l came across this little beauty: l couldn’t resist.
Pentax ME 35m SLR
This is a beauty Teri. We have a relative in Eastern Washington that I photographed years ago and I always liked that image. You did really well on this, particularly given the limitations of film. I think your focal plane was a pretty good choice, since it’s obvious you wouldn’t be able to get it all in focus. (Now you can start doing focus stacking on these). I also like your composition. Now that you have this in digital form, it would be pretty easy with most processing software to remove the partial buds sticking into the upper left and you might be able to eliminate or reduce the effect of the bright out of focus stem crossing the flower cluster, both of which can be a bit distracting.
If all that is gobbledeegook, to you at this point, don’t worry about it. Luckily almost every processing app has a ton of videos and step-by-step tutorials on the web and some even have after market instruction books available.
These sure are pretty. I love the way the buds cluster so tightly. The contrasting light green is so nice to look at. I kind of wish the biggest flower facing us was in focus instead, but you have to choose if you’re not going to stack them. Backgrounds, too, are tough with this kind of subject and you probably did everything you could to avoid that bright stem behind. As Dennis mentions, it’s now possible to mitigate or remove elements like that to make a more pleasing image and that’s certainly an option here.
Teri: A terrific subject, certainly irresistible. I don’t mind so much the slightly OOF flower but the busy BG distracts more than I’d like. This is a crude selection/blur/burn of the BG. I don’t really like the rendering of the OOF buds on the left side but I was too lazy to put in a lot of effort there. In any event, really nice find and a solid capture.
