Flower Macro: Hellebore

[Victor Dallons]

Hellebores are among the first flowers to bloom in the Pacific Northwest of the US and provided me with a chance to put my 90 mm macro lens to some use me this spring. I did not care for the background in this composition, so I hung my dark green fleece pullover as a backdrop. An overcast day provided some nice soft light with a little bit of direction. I used f/40 to increase the depth of field, with an exposure time of 4 seconds. Any comments on improvements will be appreciated.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Victor,

That's a very good starting point for a flower macro sharp where it needs to be and with good exposure.

My suggestion might seem a little odd; to my (possibly warped) mind, the bloom is 'looking out of shot' left and there's dead space behind it on the right. I can see why you have cropped there, but the relative positions of foreground and background blooms has forced that, which really prevents the best composition. Not sure if I am making any sense.

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[Victor Dallons]

Thanks Dave.

You are making sense to me. A flower is like a face. In portrait or wildlife photography you make a space for a face to look or move into if not looking directly into the camera. In his photo of a Hellebore, I could have tilted the camera rotated a bit more to the right to achieve your suggested composition. That would have left less dark space in the upper right and a bit more dark space on the upper left.

Victor