Valentine's Day

[MarvinTheSpartan]

Hello, this is my first post (aside from the welcome thread). I am a beginner looking for constructive criticism. These are the flowers I bought my wife for Valentine's day. I decided they'd make a good subject for some photography practice. Let me know what you think and what I need to work on. Thanks!

[PhotoRob]

Greetings from Tampa Mike, and welcome to CIC. You picked a tough subject to photograph; composition is tricky but I think you did the right thing by pulling in tight. I find the black space in the upper right a little distracting, and overall it feels a bit soft (the left most flower what you were focused on?), maybe increasing your depth of field to catch all the flowers, try focus stacking, or go with a shallow depth of field and focus on just one flower.

I have family outside of Chicago, look forward to your pics!

[Geoff F]

Basically OK, Mike. Maybe just a fraction too tight on top and bottom but was there something which had to be avoided?

Possibly, I would have concentrated mostly on just two blooms and used a different size ratio to reduce the right side a little.

How much have you cropped from the original image? It is a bit difficult to think about alternatives without actually being there to way up the alternatives.

As Robert said, if possible I would have used a slightly narrower aperture to increase the focus depth. But the basic exposure and colour look fine to me.

[MarvinTheSpartan]

Thank you both for the reply's. Here is the original before I cropped it, I was trying to get rid of as much of the black as possible. I had my camera set to f/8 at 0.8s and had it focused on the 3rd flower from the left. I am open for input on how I could have composed it and/or cropped it differently or what other camera setting I could try. Also, can you explain what focus stacking is?

[PhotoRob]

Focus stacking is taking a sequence of photos of the same subject at varying depths of field and then combining them in post to create one image. I've used Zerene Stacker (http://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker), but there are plenty of other options...

This page shows a good example of a stacked and unstacked image:

http://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker...ls/tutorial001

[Geoff F]

I rather like the original, Mike, as it shows the 'full scene' of a complete and carefully arranged display, which has been well photographed. The amount of black background doesn't bother me.

But if cropping, I would still like to see just a fraction more space at the top and bottom.

This tutorial goes into greater depth about photographing flowers. In three extensive episodes which tend to get rather detailed.

http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/f...flowers-1.html

[MarvinTheSpartan]

Thank you both again for the input. I'll check our the links your provided.

[Kaye Leggett]

Hi Mike. I spend a lot of time photographing flowers - they don't move being one good reason why. I like the others prefer the uncropped version as the Gypsophelia (I think it is anyway) has more context, in your cropped version it is a distraction. If they're still in a photographical state I would also try a photo from above looking down so you get the whole arrangement, which reminds me I must go and do the same on for the bunch I received before they go over.