The Day After the Storm

Image Critiques Weekly Challenge
1

Clematis-3.jpg
Clematis-3.jpg2048×1365 1.73 MB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

The Day After the Storm

Purple Clematis: Flower books say it’s a common flower. It may be common but it carries itself with extraordinary grace and beauty. Heavy rain and hail fell here the evening before. Most of the other flowers I saw were badly bruised, missing petals, or just generally looking fairly bedraggled. Clematis grow on slender vines. They work their way up the stronger stems and branches of other plants. This one found a young Douglas Fir Tree to climb up. The little tree had sought shelter under the boughs of a much larger Fir Tree which protected it from the harsh weather. It was a sight to behold as rain, sunshine, fog and sky danced overhead, creating light that just begged to be captured in this moment.

Specific Feedback

I’m fairly happy with the image, but sometimes we photographers are blind to our own work! I am always open to any critique of my images. These are fairly frail petals, 2-3 inches in diameter. The one petal at the top is facing right at the camera, so there are some artifacts from stacking there and a few around the center of the flower. I spent some type re-touching those areas in Helicon, but didn’t get it all.

Technical Details

Nikon D850
Sigma 105 Mm Macro
ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/100th
This is 78 images stacked in Helicon Focus.

1 Like
2

Lovely, and a good-enough job with a difficult subject to stack. With a subject with a lot of overlap, I always have a better result (or better luck?) with a smaller aperture. But then I might need to blur the BG – fairly easy these days with a sharp subject. Or just try to composite a wide-open BG. Your Bg here is beautiful!

3

Eek! I meant to comment on this and things got away from me. Agreed that the background is pretty sweet, but I’d like a bit more room on the bottom for the flower to droop into so to speak. So many shots for the stack. I don’t know that you need them, but if this technique works, it works. Subtle, but effective texture and I really like the light on the stem.