Project 52 - HUGO

[HUGO]

All feedback welcome

[FrankMi]

Hi Hugo and welcome to CiC!

Feedback? OK <smile!>.

Red, even when out of focus, pulls the eye so the red flowers with the butterfly in the center work well because you want folks to examine the subject closely. The red on the right and left pull the eye out of the frame, which doesn't help.

You could try to crop the image just enough so that you eliminate the left and right edge red and then take another look at the image. When you do, you will likely realize that it is a bit lopsided to the left. Why? Because the green stem on the right is not contributing to the subject and the butterfly and flower is too far left off center. We really don't want the subject dead center (unless it is symmetrical), but off center enough to add interest to the composition.

If we crop out too much of the right side, the image starts to become square. You may or may not like that effect for this subject and indeed a square crop can work very well for some images. If you feel you want the image ratio to be a more normal 4:3 ratio then we may need to make a few more adjustments.

For starters, we don't want to clip the top or the edge will be too close to the butterfly. On the other hand, if the butterfly is the subject and the red flowers are being used to complement the butterfly, then we could afford to loose a bit of the flowers at the bottom and not affect the impact of the image. We could crop just enough of the bottom and right side to maintain the 4:3 ratio.

There are more adjustments we could do for sharpness, contrast and color tone but let’s see if you like the way your image looks after playing with just the cropping for the moment.

Hope this helps!

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Hugo,

I have added your P52 thread to the main Index, so you're "fully signed up" now and we'll hopefully see another from you next week

On this one, my thoughts are;
EXIF: Nikon D90 at 105mm, f/5.6, 1/400s, iso 200

Exposure doesn't look too bad, although a peek at the RGB histogram reveals it did overload the red channel

You have reasonable focus sharpness on the butterfly subject, but a narrower aperture for more Depth of Field would help
Doing that would suggest the use of a higher iso to avoid risky camera shake with a slower shutter speed (I would guess this is shot handheld)

The composition isn't ideal;
It is facing out of frame, positioned on left, I would consider a square crop and lose the right hand side
You have a few bits of another bloom creeping in on the left, these could easily be cloned out to avoid drawing the viewer's eye away from the subject

I hope that helps and welcome to CiC,

[HUGO]

Thanks for the tips
Is this better?

[FrankMi]

Thanks for the tips
Is this better?

Works quite nicely for me. I hope that it works for you as well!