What not to do

[chauncey]

I played with this for several hours, came out technically good, but...I broke a cardinal rule.
Keep it simple! Do you'll agree?

[Shadowman]

I guess it depends on what you needed to do to get the shot. If you don't share with us how it was setup, you can maintain that you didn't break the rule. Nicely captured.

[chauncey]

The rule that I broke was that of composition, for, IMHO...the scene is entirely too complicated.
It's a stacked and merged image.

[Shadowman]

The rule that I broke was that of composition, for, IMHO...the scene is entirely too complicated.
It's a stacked and merged image.

To me the composition doesn't matter as this is a closeup to me and the subject encompasses the entire arrangement. There are enough additional elements, such as color, leading lines (the stem), and texture that overshadows specific rules of composition.

[DanK]

To be frank, it seems too complicated to me. There are too many flowers, and they are too small, to focus on the individual flowers, and the mass of them don't make up a very interesting shape.

[Brev00]

To me, the busy-ness comes from the background color. The very hot magenta/pink fights with the deeper reds in the flowers plus there is the variegation of the color which adds more complexity. The flowers would probably look better with a duller, more monotone background maybe just the yellow/green or go for black. The detail, depth, and intricacy of the flowers are worth continued exploration.

[John 2]

William, I agree with your own assessment up to a point. For me, compositionally an image needs to be "grounded" so that if say there was a visible stalk, it would act as lead-in to the flower head. This is floating which can also work but in order to capture the eye, it needs some mechanism to bring the eye to rest. Symmetry is often the answer. If this were a single sunflower head viewed from the same angle, there would be a natural centre. The randomness of the flower head here leaves the eye wandering a bit restlessly over the subject - IMHO. However, there is no doubting the technical quality. (Now, I'm getting ready to duck.)

[Slipper]

I wonder if its too busy. Something just isnt right despite a fine image. Cropping off the right to leave the 3 main flowers vertically, looks better to me. Is it the "do 1' 3, 5 or any odd number" thing, but after 5 its too busy for me.
(Reading John's above, I may need to duck too then)

[Doorstop]

I do like the colours, and I like the hot pink background tremendously.
To me,the flowers are a bit too busy, and none of the blooms fully face the camera - they are all slightly turned away.
Also, I would have expected the to petals to be soft and translucent, however they seem to be solid and waxy with no detail.

[chauncey]

I would have expected the to petals to be soft and translucent, however they seem to be solid and waxy with no detail

That would have required proper back lighting or a light box perhaps...which wasn't used.
It's a stacked and photo-merged image that is 30" wide, which worked...
where lighting/composition less so.

[TobyMac]

Personally I don't find it too busy. I love the colour and everything and could totally picture this hanging in someone's livingroom printed quite large on canvas.