Wet Redbud leaves #1

Image Critiques Weekly Challenge
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Wet Redbud leaves #1
Wet Redbud leaves #11600×1067 473 KB

I’ve been posting high magnification views of the redbud leaves in my backyard in macro for a couple of weeks. It’s been a long, cool, rainy spring here with both the redbud flowers and young leaves looking very attractive for 3 weeks. Then, when I listed the next week’s challenge (this challenge) on Friday morning, we had experienced heavy rains overnight, so I went out to see what “things” looked like. Here’s one view of the young, wet Redbud leaves. This is a 10 shot stack at nearly life size magnification. (5D3, 180mm macro L, 1/60 s, f/16, iso 800, tripod)

What technical feedback would you like if any?

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)

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Mark, I really am enjoying this one. I love raindrops with refractions, but they aren’t easy to get. I may have to break down and try the stacking, because you obtained wonderful detail in the droplets. I love how the lighting is coming from behind the leaves, and making the drops and veins show up nicely. Maybe because of the raindrops, but I believe this is your best redbud leaf shots yet. Great job! :+1: :+1:

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Hi Mark,

The results of your stack look good. The lighting is excellent. Well done…Jim

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Great detail, raindrops and colors. This one works really well for me. I might burn the brighter OOF spots below the branch and near the edge, but minor stuff. Looks really nice.

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Mark: What Shirley said! Got a nice :scream:meter spike from this one. Many kudos. >=))>

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Beautiful, Mark. I love the lighting on the leaves and the drops are great. The lower and upper left corners of the background feel a bit distracting, but easily fixed.

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This is just gorgeous Mark. Beautifully done.

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Amazing! It’s amazing how beautiful water droplets can look.

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Excellent post for this week’s challenge. Did you happen to get any images of the buds?

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Wow! Great composition, detail, light, and bokeh. I’ve tried to capture images like this if they appear during a grand landscape photo shoot, but it’s tough. Even with a tripod it seems like detail is always lost due to a breeze or the composition isn’t right for some reason. Nice work.

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@Michael_Lowe, there’s a wet bloom shot from several days earlier here. After this rain event there were very few flowers left on the trees.

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I really like this, Mark! Great detail in both leaves and raindrops. I can see where the stacking paid off in this. Like Shirley, I haven’t tried that yet but I can see it’s something I need to learn. The only nit I have in this is the odd, almost gray background smear in the upper left corner. It pulls my eyes every time I look at the image. Probably wouldn’t be too difficult to clone that out with some of the darker green from other parts of that corner.