Critique Style Requested: Initial Reaction
Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.
Questions to guide your feedback
What do you think of when you see this bunch of flowers? Does it evoke an emotion?
Other Information
Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.
Image Description
Pasque Flowers have been a favorite of mine since I was a small child. They peppered the Sagebrush meadows with their purple goodness every Spring in the mountains where I grew up. With their large blossoms, fuzzy stems and cheerful demeanor, they compel you to love them whether you think you want to or not! It doesn’t hurt that they are one of the first flowers to appear in the Spring time. Did you know that the hair-like structures are designed to help them survive frost? The inevitable frost forms on the hairs, and not on the stems and petals This keeps those important parts from freezing! They are wonderfully adapted for life in the northern latitudes like Montana. I call them my favorite, but in reality, my favorite flower is whichever one I am looking at through my camera!
Technical Details
Typically, I photograph portrait style photos with a macro lens. I love to capture the scene with sharp details and textures. Pasque Flowers are so soft and gentle, and the sun was just about to slip below the horizon, that I thought I’d use a different technique with this one. I shot this with a 70 -300mm lens at 300mm, wide open at f/6.3. I set the camera right down on the ground, knowing the plants in the foreground would be nicely blurred.
Specific Feedback
Always open to all feedback. Is the foreground blur appropriate or distracting. Is the color cast ok? There was an orange cloud in the background, but the sun was not directly shining on this scene. I’ve enhanced the saturation in both the background and the foreground to make the image more like I hoped it would, and not the way it actually worked out (the sun stayed behind the cloud and never came into view. Are the blurry tall, dead stems in the background distracting? I am a stickler for not disturbing nature. I will often use a stick or rock to gently hold something down and then stand it back up when I leave, but these dead stems were fairly prolific and close to the trail so I chose to leave them.