The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
One of my favorite wildflowers - Blue Flag or Wild Iris growing in a backwater on the Spirit River. I finally got into to my favorite place to kayak thanks to the water levels being back to normal. It’s been incredibly buggy this year and so I haven’t ventured out much because of the maddening hordes that form a cloud around your head and fill your ears with their insistent whine. Even covered in Deet you’ll be bitten and itch for days. It’s a joy. Even in the kayak I couldn’t escape, but put some time in to photograph this plant against a venerable trunk; one of my favorite things to do with wildflowers.
Specific Feedback
So I processed this one within an inch of its life because it represents so much about paddling the backwaters I love - wildness, but serenity and a fierce independence that some of living things have here. Did I overdo? Too wild?
Technical Details
Handheld in the kayak
Lr for initial adjustments including a bit of a crop and Denoise AI function. Then I sent it to Topaz AI standalone for some sharpening. Photoshop for some distraction removal and the Neural Depth Blur filter applied to just the background and then blended around the edges. Fiddly. Very fiddly.
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
I like the environmental aspect with the water, tree, and flower. The tree makes a nice backdrop for the flower. I wonder if a tighter crop to show off the flower would work. For me, the background greenery seems to have a sheen and tends to draw my eye.
Absolutely not overdone – no way – not even a hint of it! If you were fiddling, it was with a Strad. I love the centered composition! That and the leaves make this bloom regal, even though it’s small in the frame. It probably thinks it’s the same size as the tree. The hummingbirds of the plant kingdom!
I actually love the BG foliage. My eye does jump back there but I love the softness of both focus and contrast. The iris brings me back with its 3D sharpness. Neural Depth Blur, hummm? I need to look into that. I’m still barely into the century with all this newfangled processing.
Every so often we think about moving to WI, where we have good friends, maybe just in our hot dry summers, then we remember bugs. (And we won’t even talk about winters.)
When the sun begins to die and shrouds the earth in even more heat than we have now, I think the two things that will survive longest are iris and cockroaches.
Your intent comes across very well, Kris, but I think you could do the flower a bit more justice by cropping a little tighter. I wouldn’t remove that spray of leaves on the left, but I think the right side and top could be pruned quite a bit without losing context. And speaking of context, if you had a tad more water on the bottom to draw attention to that aspect of the environment, I’d love to see it.
Thanks @Allen_Brooks, @Diane_Miller & @Dennis_Plank - I’m glad this mostly works for you guys. It’s a tough thing to capture small scenes in totally wild places like this. Plus I can’t get out of the boat often to clean up, so I have to take things as I find them.
I tried a tighter crop of this image and it didn’t work for me. The graceful curve and fall of the leaves on either side is part of what drew me to the scene and it hurts to crop them in half. So here’s a close up of the same flower when I had the boat right up next to it -
And I don’t have one with more water - probably it was really messy or too light with reflections of the sky or something. It was about 8 or 10 inches deep here.
Both of these are also very nice! I’m a fan of portraits but I see your point about the value of some environment. I may have a chance for some of our wild iris in a couple of weeks, but they may have been trashed by the hot dry weather we’ve been having. And fire season is off to a major start.
Kris, I’m so glad that you were able to get out with your camera in the kayak and didn’t get eaten alive by the bugs. That must be fun (minus the bugs of course) to get out in the kayak and find subjects down low to photograph. I would have probably passed this scene by looking for something better, and I would have missed out. I never thought of using a tree for the BG of an iris. Well seen. I think I like the idea of a right crop of the original post as that side has oof stuff that doesn’t seem to match up with the left side. Just how I am seeing it. I would be pleased to have got the shot that you did while trying to stay afloat on a kayak! My mother didn’t name me Grace for a reason, I have decided. The camera and I would have probably ended up wet while I was trying to frame the shot. I like your original better than the close in cropped images.
Thanks @Allen_Brooks, @Diane_Miller & @Shirley_Freeman - kayaking shows me so many things I’d never see from a trail and I spend some happy hours on the water. More tomorrow, but not sure how much photography I’ll get done as part of a group.
It’s not that hard to photograph things from a kayak. Most recreational boats are very stable - moreso than a canoe since they usually have keels and sometimes rudders. My boat is about 3 feet wide with a lot of that in the water and I sit in the hull so it’s very easy to find and control the center of gravity. After about 1/2 a dozen times out I was very comfortable with having my gear with me. These days I shoot two bodies so I can have a wildlife lens on one and a wide angle on the other.
I find that sometimes flowers take over the interest in plant and so the structure and purpose of the rest of it can get obscured. Doing these more environmental photos helps me recover some of that lost information and present the life it leads rather than just its reproductive parts. Plus some plants are just so lovely all by themselves. Even iris seed pods are a lot of fun.
Hope you get some wild irises Diane, and that fire season gives you a break for once.
