Sarah, you were on my mind as I created this image in July. Salsify flowers along the side of the Applegate Ridge Trail near Jacksonville, OR had gone to seed. Only this one remained mostly intact. The full image included the entire globe of seeds with some margin of background. I chose to center crop in 1x1 and center the seed over the center of the substructure. I was walking with just my 90mm macro seeking suitable subjects. Selected f/11 to keep the silky strands in focus while slightly defocusing the supporting structure. Orange saturation was slightly increased in post. This is handheld with available light, manually focused. A viewer with forensic interest might notice tiny incongruities of the white filaments in the upper left. Dirt, dead insect I think, was trapped there. Used contact aware replacement in Ps. Editing was in LrC with a pass through Topaz Sharpen AI.
Specific Feedback Requested
Sarah, you comments and suggestions are always helpful insights into your sensibilities and imagination. Would you have done any differently? I also produced a B&W but it is much more interesting in color due to the orange/brown substructure which gets lost in a monochrome.
Technical Details
Sony a7iv, Sony 2.8/90 macro @ f/11, 1/200", ISO 400 (the lowest ISO on the secondary analog amplifier in this Sony model).
Hi Richard! I am always happy to see a salsify photo! I agree with you that the orange in the background adds a nice pop of color. I also like the arrangement of the pattern across the frame and think the centered, square crop works well, with one exception as noted below. In this case, a fully centered composition amplifies the dominant starburst structure across the frame and then the little individual starbursts.
Since you asked what I would do differently, I think I would have selected a wider aperture (f/4 or f/2.8 for example) so that the orange structures in the background were rendered a bit more softly. If the orange pieces had less detail, I think the starburst structures might command all the attention, with the background color adding a supporting element. Here, I think the colorful details in the background compete with the starbursts a bit. Did you try wider apertures while you were photographing this plant?
With regard to the square crop, I like everything except for the left edge. The centers of three of the starbursts get pretty close to the edge, which makes the composition feel a little tight and slightly unbalanced to me. With these situations, I generally want a major compositional element either totally in or totally out. Here, one of the starburst in particular feels like it is cut off a bit too much. When you were taking the photo, a slight shift to the left might have given you a bit more breathing room with those starbursts so that both the right and left edge would look similar in terms of balance. I rotated the photo and think this orientation reduces the impact of the tightly framed starbursts when they are in the lower right compared to upper left.
Sarah, knew you’d see things invisible to me. Thanks again. I’ll play with the crop and orientation from the original.
I should remember to bracket aperture more often. One reason for cropping this one was the rapid fall off of focus with curvature of the seedball. F/4 would have given a Lensbaby effect but f/8 or slightly larger would have defocused the central structure more yet might have preserved enough of the filamentous elements. The filaments were radiating spherically in 3-D space. Attempting to capture them with enough in focus depth to show their scope was also in my goals.
Richard
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Beautiful image Richard and I agree with Sarah’s suggested crop. It really helps clean up the left side.
Thanks! I’ve picked up more subtle sensibilities like this from Sarah than from anyone else. Her eyes and brain are really in tune.
