I would appreciate your thoughts on this type of photo in general and this one in particular. Personally, I have mixed views, perhaps, in part, because the background isn’t all that interesting. I do like the flower, however.
The plant is indeed lovely, Allen, and your capture and post work, in that regard is really nice. However, the problem I’m having with this image is the horizon. Something I’ve learned from Sam Abell, is to have your subject “head and shoulders” above the horizon. As it is there is kind of jumble of activity at the horizon line and your subject, the plant and the bloom, are getting lost in the action. I think it would have worked better to either have lowered your camera so that the neck of the plant up, was above the horizon or raise your camera up so that the entire plant is below the horizon and framed by the terrain.
Allen, I thought I’d add this wonderful lecture by Sam Abell in case you or anyone else is not familiar with it. This might be the best presentation on composition I’ve seen to date and well worth a listen. The Life of a Photograph
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Allen, I think your instincts were correct concerning the background and that @Kerry_Gordon is correct in his suggestion for this specific scene. I do like the interesting subject and the processing looks very nice!
The plant is fantastic, Allen, but to me the background is competing with it and not doing it any favors. I don’t know the topography, but possible getting a lower angle so the background wasnb’t such a big factor would have helped. Alternatively using some kind of add-on lens for the phone might have given you a shallower depth of field. Certainly with lots of careful work you could mellow out the background in processing. Still a wonderful find and the detail in the plant is excellent.
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Thanks @Kerry_Gordon, @Alan_Kreyger, and @Dennis_Plank for your comments. I knew there was a problem, not quite sure what (as I don’t do a lot of landscapes), so your thoughts are quite helpful and educational. Kerry, I’ll check out the lecture-thanks for the link.
Allen, you have already received many useful comments. Even though this is a landscape image, it strikes me that many of the “background control” issues discussed are those commonly covered in critiques of macro images. To me what is interesting here is the plant, not the landscape it is part of. i might have approached this as a macro image to emphasize the interesting plant.
Kerry, Thanks for the recommendation. I agree, an excellent discussion on composition and well worth the time to listen to his thoughts on photography.
Allen
Allen,
This is an excellent image of this plant and it’s blossoming flowers. The “type” of photo is one that I think is best for some botanical guide book or something. I great and beautifully captured example of the species. As you point out, the background isn’t the best, but to the point, it does provide great context of the environment the plant is growing it.
I’ll just echo the comments about the horizon and the other excellent comments and suggestions.
Lon
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I would argue that the issue here is not one of horizon but of dominance. If we look at the painting of the Mona Lisa we see her head crossing the horizon of the distant trees (if I remember correctly). Yet nobody has said it’s a poor composition due to this issue. That’s because the trees are so small compared to her portrait that they are background.
Here the background is behind the flower but it isn’t really a ‘background’. If I create a Mona Lisa composition with this I get an image where the horizon issue becomes irrelevant. In fact, I would argue that since the background is slightly out of focus it really should be made submissive, and it’s presence improves the flower.
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I’m going to suggest a little different approach, but one drilled into me by Sam Abell (Good reference Kerry!).
With isolated subjects the background becomes critical, consisting of both the “middle” ground and especially the horizon. A great way to work with that is to get close and shoot from a higher POV using wide angle lenses for max DOF as well as angle of coverage. The wider view and higher perspective allows you to streeeetch the middle ground. By shifting from side to side, and raising or lowering your POV slightly you can adjust the relationship of your main subject to the horizon while also taking advantage of interesting features in the middle ground to strengthen the composition. At the time I was with him Sam said his most-used lens was a 28mm prime on film or the equivalent on digital.
Brian Peterson showed me a different technique that rounds out Sam’s approach. Stick with the close shot using wide angles, but get low. Really low. It often turns into what I call belly flop photography, but by lowering your POV you can completely eliminate distractions from the middle ground while working with the horizon and your subject. It might have made it into one of his books, but Brian has a brilliant example of a castle in Europe. Shot at eye level there’s a flower bed in the foreground, a busy parking lot in the middle ground and the castle on the horizon. He got close to the flower bed and dropped down low with a WA lens of one length or another. The lowered POV completely eliminated the parking lot while the flower bed created a foreground “garden” for the castle. Brilliant work.
From your shot I can’t speculate what opportunities or distractions lurk in the middle ground, but it’s pretty clear that the horizon has interesting features you could have explored in relation to the foreground plant.
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I think the last crop the strongest, though I do miss some of the bottom of the plant and it’s height is interesting.