Good Morning Sunshine

[Ken Curtis]

Took this photo Sunday morning. Although it was early morning, the Sun was pretty bright, so I darkened the background to make the main flower stand out more. I would really appreciate hearing your suggestions for improving this image.

[Geoff F]

Probably a matter of personal taste, Ken, but I would crop the right side. End up with 5 x 4 ratio or square.

For me, there is nothing but distraction on the right side.

That won't fit into the 'thirds rule' but I always regard flowers, or insects, as portraits and follow the same guidelines which I would use for photographing people.

[ggt]

Wow! too much for me in the morning --coffee only please!

Is it just me or my monitor, is there a bit too much blue? I see blue in the yellow of the flower . . . .

[Sonomadavid]

Probably a matter of personal taste, Ken, but I would crop the right side. End up with 5 x 4 ratio or square.

For me, there is nothing but distraction on the right side.

That won't fit into the 'thirds rule' but I always regard flowers, or insects, as portraits and follow the same guidelines which I would use for photographing people.

Nice shot,Ken. I agree with Geoff, maybe crop it a bit on the right side to cut out the distractions. In the end, it's personal preference, I guess.

[Ken Curtis]

There may be a bit of blue in the main flower and its leaves. I did a dumb thing when I took the sunflower shots and forgot to check the white balance setting on the camera. It was set on incandescent, so all my photos had a bluish tint. I tried taking out the blue, but I do not remember the exact shade of yellow, so tried to go from memory.

Another goof on my part was uploading too soon. I am not disciplined enough to wait for a day before uploading images. Geoff is entirely correct regarding the distracting light areas in background. I was so thrilled to get everything dark, that I forgot to stand back and take a look. Oh well. One of these days I will learn.

Here is latest iteration with light areas removed and slightly cropped on right side.. Suggestions still welcomed.

[terrib]

I am not really qualified to critique, but I can tell you what I like. I do like that you took out the bright spots but I am glad that you didn't crop out or cut off the lower right sunflower. I like the contrast, not only in brightness, but in that this sunflower seems to be standing tall and proud and the ones behind it are bowing.

[MrB]

Ken, my suggestion is that the petals are so bright that the detail of their folds and textures is almost burned out. Working on the original image file, it should be possible to experiment with various settings to recover that detail. Although the compression makes the following example a bit messy, it shows the possibility of more detail being revealed even from your little uploaded Jpeg image -



Philip

[MilT0s]

I like the contrast to the other flowers facing down.

[Ken Curtis]

Thank you, Philip. I'll give it a try.