Wood sorrell

[Kris_Smith (Kristen M Smith)]

Critique Style Requested: Standard

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

Description

Glad I’ve learned more about the timing of this plant’s bloom cycle - it’s mid to late June. After looking over many patches of this gorgeous ground cover, I found this little section that had the uniformity and density I needed in the leaves to show off its flower. They were just starting to bloom and there were a lot of unopened buds, but enough fully open blossoms to work with.

To preserve the look of a shady forest floor I used a pop of off-camera fill flash to light the tops of the leaves from the side. If I positioned the flash too low, the stems underneath showed up too brightly. The flash was probably at 1/32 power and I just held it and moved it around until I got what I wanted.

Specific Feedback

Obviously you’re going to cut off leaves no matter what you do with a scene like this, but I thought the way this group came together worked well and what was cut off isn’t distracting. The density of flowers is much, much lower than that of the leaves. Is the singular flower too static/staged? Should I clone in more? LOL.

Technical Details

Tripod & flash
Metering mode = highlight weighted

Lr for initial processing - lowered exposure a bit and applied the usual S-curve for contrast. Added texture and legacy sharpening & nr. Photoshop to clean up some distractions and further tease apart colors and tones in the leaves. Back in Lr I decided on the crop and did some further spot removal in the leaves.

[Shirley_Freeman]

Perfect! The lighting, the placement of the one bloom, everything is perfect, Kris. Candy to the eye, for sure! I can’t think of anything to improve this shot.

[Jens_Ober]

Hi Kris,
wow, that looks really fantastic. I love how the bright flower pops out of all the nicely composed leaves.

Sorry, but I couldn’t resist playing around with the image:

I warmed up the flower slightly, added some contrast, and burned some leaves at the edges.

But your image is great as it is. I would also have a lot of fun photographing such scenes.
Well done!!!

[Paul_Breitkreuz]

Kris, a truly fine image here. The singular flower is a real show stopper amongst the grove of green leaves…

[Kris_Smith (Kristen M Smith)]

thanks @Jens_Ober for that subtle edit. It looks good to me and in keeping with what I wanted to present. I did darken the corners somewhat with an inverted Radial filter, but it was a smaller adjustment for fear of looking fake. I’m usually kind of paranoid about it looking forced.

Thanks @Paul_Breitkreuz - the flowers were very sparse and finding groups of them with uniform leaves was impossible so I went with the best thing I could find. The leaves are as fun as the flowers!

[Jens_Ober]

You are welcome Kris.
I’m sometimes not sure if it’s worth posting a rework with such subtle adjustments.