The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I was wandering around my hometown to capture some aftermath of the heavy floodings that we had this winter. I came across a fence post with this beautiful moss growing on it. A little miniature world of its own. I didn’t use a macro lense for this photo (I don’t have any), I needed to use the one I got with me.
Specific Feedback
I would like to know if you think I got the focus right?
Sporophytes! Yay!!! (channeling Kermit the Frog for that, lol)
The saying is true that the best gear is what you have with you and this is a nice look at the spore-bearing parts of moss. Sometimes the stands of these are so thick it’s hard to know where is the best point of focus. Ideally I want it sort of in the middle of the sporophytes both in frame side to side and front to back. Looks like you got the moss itself here which isn’t bad, but limits the amount of sporophytes you have in focus. I’d also eliminate the OOF stuff in front at the bottom just for clarity’s sake. The greens look nice and the pop of red is excellent. A nice find!
This is a really nice look at this clump of moss, Jana. Shooting something like this can get tricky because it’s difficult to pick a good focal point. I think, given the situation, your focal plane was about right. When I shoot this kind of subject, I try to find a clump without too much depth, but that can be difficult. Give your settings, I think you could have stopped down to get more depth of field and increased your iso to compensate-that camera should be good for at least iso 2000 with modern software for noise reduction. This sort of subject is also great for focus stacking if you haven’t tried it. I agree with @Kris_Smith about minimizing the out of focus foreground elements-they always tend to attract attention where you don’t want it.
Thank you Kristen. First of all for introducing the term Sporophytes to me. I had no idea what it was called. I absolutely agree with you, the focus on the Sporophytes instead of the moss would have been better. I’ll definitely try to improve that next time.
Thank you Dennis, I’ll try to increase the depth of field next time. I haven’t tried focus-stacking yet, I only read about it. Guess I should maybe deep-dive into it.
Sporophytes are some of my very favorite subjects to photograph with the macro lens. Mosses produce them, but so do liverworts and some of those look like tiny palm trees. We have some liverwort in the yard so I should make another attempt this year.
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