Does this work from a composition standpoint?

[AlwaysOnAuto]

[Dave Humphries]

For me - Not really Alan,

I'd crop a bit off the RHS and possibly a slither off the bottom too.

Pretty good exposure and focus though.


What you really want to achieve here is a better tonal separation of the bloom from the pot and ideally simplify still further by separating the bloom from the leaves behind (and in front).

Assuming you can't do anything with the plant itself, my suggestion would be to try some VERY directional lighting of the bloom, making the pot and leaves fall in to shadows, so they become much darker.

Good luck, Dave

[AlwaysOnAuto]

What if I did something like this?

[IzzieK]

There is a little bit of overexposed part near the stamen, can you do brush on texture on that part?

[DanK]

I agree with Dave. You need to separate the bloom from the rest and draw the viewer's eye to it. The second one is better because the distracting detail is darker and less prominent, but it is still distracting.

I am certain now that I sound repetitive, but I think to make your flower shots more effective, you have to pay more attention to backgrounds--either positioning the subject so that the background is OK, using an artificial background, or doing some fancy postprocessing to create an artificial background.

[joebranko]

I too found the background distracting, and taking away from the subject.

[chauncey]

You can fiddle with this and fiddle with that and still not have an image to hang in your living room...
reshoot the flower heeding the lighting/exposure/background.

[Stagecoach]

""Does this work from a composition standpoint?""

I would say far better than any of the recent ones you have posted recently Alan.

No problems with the plain black background for me and a slight crop bottom and right helps. The next thing as already said is to try and separate the flower better by it's lighting from the pot and leaves behind.

Good DoF on the flower and slightly less would have been OK assisting to reduce the impact of those rear leaves. Alternatively you could have chopped the leaf overlapping the rear of the flower off, shot from a slightly different angle or clone it out.

Edit : So rather than just suggesting I thought I would also have a go at doing it myself on your edit, not the original

Pot toned down, highlights on flower dropped slightly, offending leaf cut off and slight crop, the main intention to get it off centre. The background leaf at the top I left as it helps to frame the flower.

[Stagecoach]

You can fiddle with this and fiddle with that and still not have an image to hang in your living room...
reshoot the flower heeding the lighting/exposure/background.

Chauncey, I do not think you have much chance at all of making this image into a wall hanger and I doubt it was the intention but as a record of the flower and it's environment (potted) it's a great subject for practising the skills needed to produce a good flower 'picture'.

[jcuknz]

My thoughts on seeing this shot is that more experience in editing is required and if I had a wall suitable to hang this on I would be happy to ....

Having PSPx6 with its intelligent selection tool was very quick and easy in this case. Having selected everything except the flower and the black area it was a simple darkening with then application of the darken brush for remaining persistent highlights and the pot.

As far as composition is concerned I see it as a flower 'mug shot' and central placing is appropriate so my answer would be 'definitely no way' without some cropping and editing.

edit ... seeing it here I suspect I missed darkening some of the pot believing it to be part of the flower

[Shadowman]

Agree about the crop, perhaps shot at a higher angle to reveal more of the leaves.

[bnnrcn]

Hi Alan, reshooting seems to be a good idea as the composition is a bit crowded in this one

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Unfortunately we had rain last night and the flower isn't as 'pretty' as it was yesterday. We needed the rain so I'm not that upset that I can't re-shoot it. Hopefully there will be others in the next couple of days.