Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
I was experimenting with a shallow DOF and bokeh. It’s a shrub in our back yard. I made minor changes to color and tone in Lightroom.
Mostly I want aesthetic reactions.
ISO 100, 1/100th, about f/2.5. It’s a vintage lens and the camera can’t record the aperture.
WOW!! Whatever made that BG is amazing! Circles are so powerful and the main one with its incredible rainbow is so nicely complemented by the subtle specular highlights inside it.
I love the idea of framing the flower this way but could wish the flower was sharper and just a bit higher in the frame. This is an experiment worth a lot of playing!! It would be fascinating to photograph just the light circles and use that as a BG to drop other subjects into. You have something very special here!
Thanks for commenting, Diane. The background is a pine tree backlighted by a recently risen sun. Small shafts of sunlight came through the pine branches and created the bokeh. I was using an old Pentax 55 mm prime lens set at about f/2.5. Autofocus won’t work with that lens but live view does. The circular rainbow surprised me.
Given the aperture I was using and the distance involved, the flower stem isn’t sharp all the way through, but it’s sharply focused where I wanted it to be. Sharpness in an image like this isn’t as big a concern for me as it is for many people.
I’m not sure this is a very versatile look as this shrub is the most interesting thing in the foreground. Maybe I could persuade a model to provide the foreground interest (joke).
Don, a wonderful shot and very unusual. I love the rainbow halo framing the flower. The DOF looks fine to me (I agree with your assessment of the focus). However, I agree with Diane about wishing the flower was a little bit higher in relation to the halo.
Thanks, Susanna.
Wow - this is special; you even have a double rainbow here. I daresay @Mark_Seaver could explain how this came about. I have a vintage 50mm Pentax lens, so I am inspired to try and find this rainbow like you. The only problem for me would be getting up early - perhaps I could get it with a setting sun!
Mike, I don’t know whether the vintage lens has anything to do with it. For the most part the Pentax lens gives me results that are indistinguishable from what I get with a Canon 50mm prime. But I’m ignorant about the scientific side of all this and I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who isn’t.
I can’t see any reason why the effect couldn’t be duplicated but the novelty would wear off pretty quickly.
Don, (@Mike_Friel )the “rainbow” effect is amazingly bright and tight. It and the highlights set off the sage bloom beautifully. Scientifically, since the sun looks to be in front of the camera, this is not a rainbow. (Rainbows require the sun to be behind the observer.) The two options when the sun is in front of the observer (camera) are the 22° halo although those require small ice crystals in the air or the corona produced by tiny particles, liquid or solid, with the intensity and spacing of the colors depending on the size and number of the particles. It’s also neat that you’ve got a partial second ring crossing the tip of the bloom. This suggests that there are is another specular reflector in front of the camera.
Thanks for the explanation, Mark. I didn’t know any of that.
Very cool, Don. I don’t know if you can repeat this or not, but a Single bloom as the subject centered in that circular rainbow would be incredible. I do like this image, but wish the flowers at the bottom weren’t cut off-always a problem with this kind of a bloom head.
