3 flowers in the garden

[AlwaysOnAuto]

No Amaryllis this time.

All taken with Nex-7 w/Wollensak 127mm f4.5 lens in LTM mount.







Comments welcome. [I know, I should have taken that bud out of the last one.]

[Geoff F]

I just mentioned in another post about the problems of white flowers in sunshine. So difficult to get perfect. In your image there appears to be a bit of over exposure near the centre and I think I would have preferred the shadow on the left petal to have covered the entire petal or less than half. But that is a very minor point.

#2 looks good.

#3 has potential but the flower seems too central. Yes, #2 is equally central but in that case the background elements come to your aid and hide the central appearance. There are several potential crops for #3 to create a better and more natural looking balance. Otherwise, it looks fine to me.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I appreciate your taking the time to comment Geoff.
Here are some other shots of the same flowers only different PP on my part. In the original rose picture the center looked totally blown out to me when I first opened it. I felt lucky getting the detail out of it that I did.

[Geoff F]

Sometimes when I get over exposed spots I can cheat by cloning in some texture from other similar areas, but you have to be careful to achieve a natural looking result. There are ways of reducing over bright spots and painting in a bit of colour to problem areas during editing, but this is also tricky to get looking natural.

The only other advice I can give is to avoid bright sunshine; but that isn't always possible.

[IzzieK]

I like all of them, Alan...but my particular preference is the middle one with the bee...that is cute.

[Shadowman]

Nice reedit.

[Stagecoach]

Alan, for me I find No 1 just does not work compositionally and the fact there is just so little within the scene that is in focus. It's also often mentioned that shooting down on a flower is a no no although on some occasions it does work.

No 2 and No 3 both suffer from the problem that the flower has simply been placed too central which is a pity because both the flower, surround and background are so good. When you have strong interesting vertical elements such as the greenery in these try taking the shot in portrait mode and placing your flower centre on the thirds.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Does something like this work better then Grahame?

[IzzieK]

I am not Grahame but I like the orientation of this one...very nicely done...

[Geoff F]

Being somewhat over critical, Alan. That composition is fine but the scene seems a fraction dark and a little over saturated on the blues.

However, getting perfect flower photos in the wild under real life conditions is extremely difficult so you have actually done well to get this result.