Reworked image per feedback….
One of my favorite flowers are starting to come out on the side of the road. Always in places I’d rather not stop, but I just can’t help myself as it’s so beautiful.I loved the way the morning sun was shining through the trees behind the Queen Anne’s Lace. Creating a soft, sparkling green background.
Anything
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
300mm
1/1000
f/6.3
ISO 1600
YES!
We’ll done! You overcame the usual tendency to pull a whole bunch together and highlight the commonality, plus the other trope of shooting straight down. I’m guilty of both. But you DID find a way to isolate a pair and pose them against a gluey amalgamation of summer background.
My only feeling is that the whole is a little bit hot. Pulling back on the exposure to better define the singularity of the Queen Anne’s Lace and pull it away from the background.
I’m sure you’ll find a way.
Namaste
Very nice! Looks like the subject might have been in soft light, which gave it a nice character, and the BG is lovely. Although I’m not a fan of negative space, I like the composition.
Vanessa: This is REALLY close for me. I love the comp, BG lighting, subject and bokeh. The OOF bud in the FG is the only thing that knocks this down a peg. I might be tempted to make it go away but my wish would be for it to be sharp. This might be a subject ripe for blending a couple frames to get both elements sharp. Trying a stack with a subject that was most likely moving in the breeze quite a bit might be tough. All in all though I like your thinking and result. >=))>
I don’t know if you know the story about the Queen Anne’s Lace umbels that have the dark flower in the center. The tale is that it is a drop of dried blood when the careless Queen pricked her finger while making the lace.
A study was done comparing the number of pollinators that visited flower heads with, and without the central dark flower. The ones with had significantly more pollinators visiting than the ones without. The surmise is that the dark flower is a decoy. When pollinators see the dark spot, they visit since there is already a pollinator visiting.
Vanessa, I like the composition and the soft light on the flower and the bokeh. I would echo Paul and Bill on their comments. If the background colors are toned down, it would almost look dreamy.
Thank you everyone @Diane_Miller @paul_g_wiegman @Bill_Fach @ravi for your feedback and suggestions. I went back to the same spot yesterday morning but couldn’t find those exact flowers! I think the bud is already different! I took a lot of other angles, I’ll probably post something again. But for this exact photo, I ended up reworking it. I cropped a little more so there’s not quite as much negative space, I eliminated the front blurred bud, I brought down highlights, exposure and contrast, adjusted blacks and shadows…. So what do you think now?….
Looks a lot better. Toned down highlights and the the distracting stem and bud removed significantly improve the image. I would like to see more room on the top.
