Nice Flower Shot

[JohnW]

Just thought I would share one of the nicer flower shots I have taken. Background and foreground look to be about right this time. Shot was taken indoors at the Toronto Zoo, no flash, 55-250mm Nikon VR. Comments appreciated.

Thanks,
John

[ktuli]

John,

This is a nice shot - I've always found orchids to be a challenge to photograph because of their tendency to be bunched up like this. I do have a couple suggestions though...

First, it looks like your point of sharpest focus is on the middle of the three blossoms. In a case like this, where that blossom is partially obscured, you may want to try and focus on the first blossom that isn't obscured at all. There are some techniques you could use to achieve this - let me know if you want more detail here. Alternatively, some added depth of field may have been used to get all three blossoms in focus at once.

Second, the shot seems slightly unbalanced. If you're not opposed to it, I would rotate the shot CCW by what looks like about 5 degrees or so. Just enough to get the bottom two petals of the right most flower to be level with each other.

Lastly, after the rotate, I would crop in a little bit to get the edges equal - so that each side has the same amount of free space from the flowers to the edge of the frame. Unfortunately, it looks like the bottom edge will be your marker for that and it is pretty tight.

That said, the shot is very nicely done. The colors are very vibrant, and the diagonal positioning of the flowers in the frame is very appealing.

Nice work.

- Bill