Ben: Beautiful bloom and a fine comp. The light and BG are pretty special as well. Of course nowadays with stacking we almost always see images with the entire flower in focus. Back in the single capture days I would often shoot shallow DOF images like this. One thing to consider is your point and plane of focus. Most of the time if I had to choose to focus on one petal edge it would be the one nearest the lens. When the FG is OOF the eye tends to get stuck there whereas if the leading edge is sharp and the focus falls off to the BG it seems more natural. Having the spotlit bud in focus also takes the eye away from the flower. There are often such fine adjustments to be made with this kind of image that i hope this gives you some ideas. Keep 'em coming though. >=))>
Hi Ben. A classic composition for flowers and for a very good reason. It conveys the grace of the stem and the beauty of the flowers and buds. As for depth of field and focus, @Bill_Fach has given you some excellent feedback and I can’t add much to that except that depth of field varies a lot among flower photographers and even types of flowers. A composite with a showy center or some of the simple flowers that have ornate and complex sexual organs just beg to have the focus on them and you can get away with out of focus petals in the foreground more easily. Usually, for something like this, I tend to stop down and find an angle that will get the front half of the flower, the arc of the stem and the bud all in the area of good focus.
However, this is all a matter of taste and tastes vary.
Fresh and vibrant…reminds me of a wildflower called Spring Beauty up this way. I think both Dennis and Bill have some good suggestions and ideas. It’s so nice to see you putting up photos like this here in Flora. The light is excellent as it always is in your photos.
@Bill_Fach , @Dennis_Plank , @Kris_Smith , Thank you for your feedback, suggestions and idea’s . It’s indeed rather new to me here on Flora. And sorry for my much to late reaction . Ben
This is beautiful! I love the focus point you chose for this. The composition is nice as it is, but I wonder how it would look to crop it up from the bottom left a little bit?
