The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Found these nice blossoms along the Riverfront Park Trail in Wenatchee a couple days ago. The composition is bothersome to me. The screwy bokeh in the LRC is actually a chain link fence…What can I say? Also I wanted to slide the whole subject into the LLC to balance it out a little but the bloom in the URC was badly decomposing and needed to be left out. I walked the entire tree and this was the freshest cluster I could find within range and at an workable focal plane.
Specific Feedback
General impressions and opinions.
Technical Details
Nikon Z 7ll
Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 w/cp
100mm@ f5.6
1/60 sec
ISO 100
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
Interesting self-analysis, Bruce, as I was going to congratulate you on finding a great composition in a flower cluster like this-it’s always hard to get it to fit the frame and this works very well with that 3/4 flower in the upper right. After you pointed out the bokeh in the lower right it is pretty funky. @Diane_Miller has a technique that she calls 50% opacity cloning that can do a nice job of smoothing out a background. I’ll often do the same sort of think just picking a representative color or three from the background and painting over the area of concern at low opacity with a very soft brush. The only other change I’d consider making is to remove the partial petal entering the top of the frame.
Very lovely, with gorgeous whites!! I think the BG would profit from some careful retouching. Its color is also a little bothersome for me. You could play with some Hue-Sat or Selective Color and tone down reds. You would probably need to mask that off the flower centers but likely wouldn’t need any fancy brushwork. I like that the flowers at the top are a little less bright. I would probably tone down the one in the UR corner a bit more, or even remove it. Would be nice to have a little more at the bottom to see the tips of those two leaves.
Bruce: Beautiful blossoms and I like your comp and crop choice. I added a vignette and added some AI canvas to the bottom for the leaf tips. Over to you. >=))>
Oh yes, those whites are glorious - excellent job getting them bright and hanging on to a bit of that silky texture. Finding a workable composition with a mass of flowers like this is a big pain in the butt and I think you found a good one. The bits of leaves cut off at the bottom is more bothersome than what you had to cut off at the top. Some smoothing of the chain link bokeh might be nice - mostly to disrupt the pattern there. Nice find.
Thanks Dennis. I guess it was the fence in the bg that was bothering me more than anything. Next time I have a situation like this I’ll try a brush as you suggest. Yeah the petal tip at the top edge. Hard to believe I missed that. maybe my eyes were tired haha.
Thanks Bill. Usually I check the edges but somehow the leaf tips at the bottom edge got by me. I might go back in and make those changes as well as try to smooth out the bokeh where the fence is. I really like the light on these blooms and the pure whites make the image worth fussing over a little more.
