This photo was taken in a nature preserve that is a fen and is home to a number of rare and endangered plants. There are a number of groups of showy lady slippers growing close enough the boardwalk to get photos.
I decided to include leaves from the tulip poplar saplings growing next to this orchid.
Specific Feedback Requested
Feel free to comment on everything.
I especially would like your thoughts on including the poplar leaves in the photo. Are the two complementary or are the leaves distracting.?
I have this photo in a 4:3 ratio but I decided that I like it better in a 1:1. The 1:1 reduces the amount of poplar leaf visible, but you still know that it’s a tulip poplar.
Technical Details
Canon 5D IV | EF 70-200 @ 200mm | f11 | 1/125s | ISO100
Processed using ACR and Photoshop
Flash to freeze subjects and reduce the cluttered BG
Cloned out the few residual BG objects visible under the flash so that the orchid and tulip poplar leaves are the only objects showing
The comp is very nice, but I find the diagonal branch somewhat distracting. Perhaps, selectively darkening it may make it less dominating in the comp. The highlights are very bright and can be toned down a bit. I love the lighting of the scene and all that this image needs is some minor tweaking for perfection. Awesome…Jimn
Thanks for commenting here, Jim. I meant to and then completely spaced it. I have to agree the diagonal is disruptive here. While it is obviously connected to the leaf behind, you could clone it away and we’d be none the wiser since that leaf may have a stem out of the shot. I also agree that the whites are a bit hot here. A linear profile may help recover them if your RAW profile is blowing them out. Of course if they are blown, nothing can be done. Great texture from that sidelight! I especially like it through the leaves to bring out their structure. For a single image, putting the focus where you did is wise, but I’d love to see this focus stacked with all of the petals and the bowl in focus as well. Super job and some tweaks can make this really outstanding.
Thank you for your valuable input, @Jim_Zablotny@Kris_Smith.
I am re-posting the photo to include your suggestions. I toned down the highlights and darkened the stem to where it disappears into the BG. Kind of a hybrid to both comments. I’m curious to you thoughts to this approach.
It is softer and less of an eye-puller, for sure and I think it works better than the original. The question I suppose is do we need it? That’s a difficult one for all of us when composing and lately I’ve been holding myself to the fire when in the field. I ask myself, is it in or is it out? And that goes for post processing as well. For me, I think we need it for this image, but less strongly and that’s what you’ve achieved. It adds information to the scene and keeps the big blank area from being quite so big and blank.
Oh and you can add this photo to your original post so we can directly compare the two in the viewer. Not necessary, but a nice benefit to the way the site works.
Reducing the stem’s prominence and highlight strength has improved the comp. The post processing was necessary and the composition has benefited from these edits. Well done…Jim
No problem, David. It’s relatively easy - at the bottom of any of your posts you will see this -
Click the pencil and it opens the post so you can re-edit it. You can use the add photo button like this -
or drag and drop another photo directly into your post. You can add text to indicate it is a rework by just labeling it or going into some detail about what you did.
When you do that, you can tell folks you have by also editing your title by adding something like (with re-edit) or (+1 rework) or similar.
