Full Bloom

[Bob_Faucher]

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

Is this image inherently attractive? What first attracted you?

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

Maple catkins in full bloom stage, after fully emerging from their flower buds. Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum) is native to western North America, mostly near the Pacific coast, from southernmost Alaska to southern California.

Technical Details

Canon EOS 5D II; Canon EF 200-400mm + 1.4x @ 560mm; f/7.1 1/15 sec ISO 400; Gitzo tripod, RRS BH 55; remote trigger; five-image focus stack—one for each cluster as the limb was oscillating up and down in the breeze; assembled in Photoshop

Specific Feedback

What ever you think, positive or not

[Dennis_Plank]

Very good, Bob. Excellent depth of field and lighting. I always like the beginning of spring and this depicts it well (which is welcome this time of year).

[Bob_Faucher]

Thank you @Dennis_Plank for your comments. This tree lives outside my home and I have this viewpoint via my living room window. That conveniently places me at eye level and I can make my captures without dealing with the elements, something I do annually.

[Bill_Fach]

Bob: Screams “Spring!” to me. Really good plane of focus management. Well seen, composed, captured and presented. >=))>

[Bob_Faucher]

Thank you @Bill_Fach for your enthusiastic remarks. I have made additional images of the same twigs at different levels of development, in different years. Perhaps one or more could be displayed.