Golden Paintbrush

Image Critiques Flora Critiques
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2024-04-19 12-59-28 (B,R8,S4)-Edit.jpg
2024-04-19 12-59-28 (B,R8,S4)-Edit.jpg1784Ă—2048 1.53 MB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

I spotted this plant just starting to bloom yesterday, but it was pretty windy so I just did a little gardening to remove dead twigs in the area and went out again at early sun this morning to photograph it. As you can see, I missed some twigs.

This plant, while rather odd looking has a special place in my heart because when I first started volunteering on the prairies down here it was very endangered. There were 13 known populations of it spread across Oregon, Washington and B.C. and none of them were small. When they were discussing it’s fate, the Pat Dunn, leader of The Nature Conservancy’s South Puget Sound office basically offered to take the lead on recovery with some help from the University of Washington on research. One of the people in the meeting raised the question of cost. Pat’s Response was: “I have volunteers who will collect the seed from existing populations, volunteers who will clean the seed, volunteers who will propagate the plants, and volunteers who will plant out the young plants. I don’t see a problem with cost.” Last year this plant was officially taken off the endangered list in record time.

Specific Feedback

Oddly for our location, we had pretty bright light as soon as the sun popped up this morning, so the light was a bit harsh. I tried taming it and removing the more egregious bright spots. If you notice something particularly distracting, please let me know.

Technical Details

Sony A1, Canon 180mm F/3.5 macro lens, tripod and cable release, 8 image stack in Helicon Focus. All images at iso 400, f/5.6, 1/250. Post processing in LR & PS CC. Cropped from a horizontal original to 4998x5738.

1 Like
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Dennis: Neat story and kudos to you and the others for the effort. I like your POV especially and I don’t mind some of the clutter. This is where it lives. Well done.>=))>

3

Nice shot. I think you’ve tamed the highlights quite well. I think some should be retained as you did to add to the beauty of the shot. The water drops are a nice touch.
:metal:

4

Nice image, Dennis. I am a conservation biologist myself, working on endangered plant recovery in The Netherlands, so I found the accompanying story also very interesting.

Compositionally, it is nice that the stem comes from the BRC and curves to the UL. I wouldn’t have minded slightly more room around the stem, and with the stem not coming exactly from the corner, but a bit to the left,.

It is pin-sharp, but the yellow is a tad too bright for me, and could be toned down a bit.

Maybe you could have achieved a less busy background by stacking with a wider aperture, if necessary using a few more images in the stack to get the entire stem in focus.

Best, Gerard

5

Thanks @Bill_Fach @Michael_Lowe @gerard for your comments. Gerard: I would have liked that stem in a better position myself, but when I cropped, I was avoiding some really ugly out of focus foreground stuff in the lower right, so I settled for this. They’re just starting to bloom, so I’ll have lots more chances with more fully developed flowers.