I just shot this in our flower garden this morning.
What technical feedback would you like if any? Anything.
What artistic feedback would you like if any? Does the composition work? I cropped it to around 75% of the original just to loose some of the front out of focus flower and the background at the top and left. Do I need to crop more? I have plenty of pixels left since it is 75% of full frame.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 100 mm L macro lens, KX-800 twin flash with one softbox on the two lights. Handheld, f16, 1/180, ISO 160.
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Hi Shirley,
wonderfully composed with nice subject placement. Love the colors, and those eyes, and pollen on the bee. My only nit would be the nearly black background - I know that can be tough to avoid though. Quite a pleasing image.
Thank you, Allen. I was undecided on that background, so I appreciation your input. It was shadowed to the point that most of it was black, so I darkened the rest to make it all black. I will try lighten up the background and see how that looks. Hopefully tomorrow I can edit and re-post it.
I would not crop any more than this, I would not want to see any less of the flower than this (if anything it feels a little tight at the bottom of the flower. I’m usually not a fan of black backgrounds (I’m a tripod based macro shooter and don’t like using flash), but I think it works fairly well here given that it makes the top of the bee stand out more. Exposure, contrast, color processing look great here.
The bee is very sharp, as it needs to be. I go back and forth about some of the nearest yellow flowers not being in focus. But you are already at f16 and the plane of focus you used got the bee sharp, and those flowers are not in that plane. Without focus stacking it’s impossible to get both the bee and the yellow flowers in focus.
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Love the details here, Shirley, especially those eyes. I think the black background works very well here at it sets off the dramatic colors and avoids anything that takes a viewer’s focus away from the subject. While you probably wouldn’t what to make a career out of black backgrounds like this, they do have their place in your tool kit.
