I did a little clean up, taking Bill’s advice. I don’t use photoshop, so I could use the clone painting technique, but I often find a healing brush to do something fairly close. I think I covered the tan, though now I see other places with that hint of tan spathe everywhere! I used to do a lot of focus stacking (back in the zerene stacker days) and am loathe to return to that tedium. I’m guessing the software is all so much better now, but until I explore that, a bit of oof stamen will end up my calling card. .
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Hi folks,
I was mostly trying to participate in the weekly challenge, though this is definitely more close up than macro (96mm from 1-2 feet away though).
One of my neighbors has a lovely display of various daffodils, and I spent some time yesterday and a bit more today shooting my favorite varieties.
Specific Feedback
I am a bit out of practice with flower photography, and I forgot how hard it is!! Let me know if this is too tigthly cropped. I wanted the background dark and oof and the flowers to really burst forward. I think I achieved that.
Technical Details
Canon 5D4 with 24-105mm at 96 mm
ISO 250, f/7.1, 1/400sec (handheld!!!)
I think you pulled this off very well, Marylynne. Finding a spot in the daffodils with a halfway clean background is a nightmare in our patches, so congratulations on that. The crop feels comfortable to me since the flowers don’t feel cramped.
Marylynne: I’m rarely critical of tight crops stemming from my film days where we always were advised to fill the frame. This is a wonderful capture of this pretty pair. My only <1¢ nit is the light tan area on the top border. Make that go away and it’s 10+. >=))>
I dreamed of the tan patch disappearing! I tried and felt it looked weird but I’ll try harder. It bugs me too. Just wanted to see if anyone would mention it!
ML
Marylynne: I’ve found a simple way to deal with issues like this is to take a color sample of a nearby good area and then paint with a low opacity brush to taste over the problem area.
You also mentioned the difficulty of shooting flowers. My only other tiny nit is that the center of the flower on the right is a touch OOF. Since you shot this handheld I think you did exceptionally well. When I’m on a tripod I’ll try to align the plane of focus as precisely as possible and/or do a stack or blend. I like what your aperture setting did for the BG and would certainly want to maintain that level of blur. From this camera angle I would most likely have done just a two shot blend with both centers sharp. Hope this was at least a little helpful. >=))>
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