The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Well, close-up definitely isn’t my comfort zone, so I ended up with a manual focus stack that lacked focus on some important spots. But I liked the arrangement and the colours of these mushrooms, so I first selected one image but finally decided to use 3 and create a stack with some OOF zones.
Specific Feedback
Is the image acceptable to you, with the in focus selection that I made, or are the OOF parts too distracting?
Is the image, with the pano format, appealing at all?
Han, it works for me, but then, I haven’t had the time to dive into stacking yet, so take that with a grain of salt. I just love the colors of the mushrooms and that nice smooth BG. This is far better than I have taken yet of mushrooms. Now, @Kris_Smith shoots a lot of mushrooms and can even tell you what the name of the mushroom is, quite likely. She is also very good at stacking and may have some advice. For me though, this works. If it was mine, I might would try cropping a bit off the left. For me it doesn’t add anything then it will put the two that are more in focus in the third corner better for attention. Just a thought. To me this is a fine image, and if my old eyes serve me well, down near the bottom of the stem of the one on the right is one of my favorite subjects, a jumping spider!
A lovely subject! I wouldn’t say the OOF parts are so much distracting as just a missed opportunity. Just a little bit more in focus would be more pleasing. Back when I had to use manual stacking I tried to keep a smaller aperture, as much as I could to still have a soft BG.
I agree with @Shirley_Freeman about a little crop from the left, and what a good eye to see (and ID!) the spider! For me, the OOF FG is distracting. I think it would be better if it had been possible to smash it down, especially on the left – or to tilt the camera to level the tops.
Nice job breaking out of bird photography. Mushrooms are an endlessly changing subject and, for me, endlessly fascinating. Without seeing more of each of these, I can only have a guess at what they might be - Galerina marginata comes to mind because of the way they are fruiting in a loose group, the time of year, the texture of the stipes, the color and that they might be on a log or stump. That’s just a guess though. Common names for this species are Funeral Bells, Autumn Skullcap and Deadly Skullcap because, as you might have deduced, they are highly poisonous and can definitely kill you. And the little bug dude is probably a springtail, but a could also be the world’s tiniest jumper. Hard to tell, but it’s cute either way.
Anyway…the arrangement of shrooms is nice and I like the soft quality of the photo overall. It’s a bit less emphatic than some mushroom pictures because the leading edges of each aren’t uniformly sharp and the area of focus is so shallow. It seems the line went across the front of a couple and into the stipes for other shots. The missed areas of focus in between are a little odd, but only if you’re looking for them, which most people won’t be. I can see blurring or cloning the bits of moss that are crisp - they just look odd in the rest of the OOF moss. Just my take.
A very slight crop from the left could be good, but I think the composition is fine. Lately I’ve shot similar mushrooms quite a bit and this reminds me to put some up. BTW, this could also go in Flora, or if you have wider scenes with mushrooms that don’t really qualify as macro.
I love the soft focus and the arrangement of the mushrooms, Han. The out of focus foreground doesn’t bother me much, but the slant does make it look like the horizon isn’t straight and since two of your three mushrooms lean to the right,I think you could straighten it and at the same time take a little off the bottom and the left side.
I definitely don’t mind the DOF. Sure you could have opted to make everything sharp but I like the dreaminess that the shallower DOF brings here. Otherwise, I think the colours are very nice as is the arrangement of the mushrooms in the frame. This is a fine, well put together image in my book so nice work!
Thanks for the valuable comments, @Shirley_Freeman , @Diane_Miller , @Kris_Smith , @Dennis_Plank and @Tom_Nevesely !
About the slant: the mushrooms weren’t on the ground, but on a very rotten tree trunk that was partly covered with earth, moss and other vegetation. As I remember, the camera was level. But that doesn’t prevent one to change the angle, off course. The position made it easy to get a smooth background (it was pretty far away) and therefore I should have used a smaller aperture for larger DOF, making it easier to get everything in focus and keep the BG acceptably soft.
The space left from the first mushroom is deliberate, I like it to have some space there. But cropping some of the FG and blurring the parts that are more or less sharp is a good idea.
