A flower from the garden...

[AlwaysOnAuto]

...waiting patiently for the rain to come.

[Shadowman]

Nice shot.

[IzzieK]

Beautiful flower -- this could have benefited with a two focus stack for all the petals to be all sharp. If this is in your garden, I very much envy you. I still have to have any kind of flower in mine to start showing apart from the tulips which was just starting to come out..

[Wavelength]

Beautiful

[bnnrcn]

Beautiful colors, I agree with Isabel about focus stacking for the sharpness of the whole flower

[Brev00]

Very lovely. Another option besides stacking is just to take a few images varying only the focal point. Instead of stacking, just evaluate. Sometimes getting the near petals sharp looks better and sometimes there is a focal point that is a happy medium. You then have the option to stack, too.

[JBW]

Beautiful colours. Would it look better flipped 180 degrees?

[AlwaysOnAuto]

This is actually a crop of a much larger picture.
Once I get my computer back up and running I might just try flipping it Brian.

[DanK]

Beautiful flower and a nice capture. I agree about the need for a bit more DOF. I couldn't read exif, so I don't know if a narrower aperture might do it, but of course stacking would. This image has a problem that is common with flowers taken in gardens: it is close to a busy and distracting background. Using a narrower aperture to keep more of the flower in focus will make this problem worse. I most often take the flower out of the garden to avoid this, but if you can't or don't want to, the only option is postprocessing. Here is a very quick and frankly sloppy edit, just to show directions to try. I blurred everything but the flower, darkened everything but the flower, and then dodged the distracting second flower at the top to darken it further. It's a lousy edit, but I think it shows that you can do things to reduce the distraction of the background. If you object to people doing edits of what you post, let me know, and I will delete it.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Don't mind at all Dan.
I don't have very sophisticated software to do that kind of thing.
So, I'm a SOOC type of shooter.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I think my main problem with this picture, at least in the taking of it, is that it was pretty late in the afternoon, my focus peaking highlight color is YELLOW and it was hard to judge when what was in focus. I hoped, and think I got, the center of the flower was sharp so the detail of all the stuff in there would show. I'll have to check and see what the flower looks like today since we've had almost 2/3" of rain the last couple of days.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Here is the original picture this was cropped from.
I'm personally impressed with the amount of detail I was able to capture from that distance.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I tried this again today.
Light is a little more harsh since we have bright sun instead of cloudy overcast.

[Shadowman]

I tried this again today.
Light is a little more harsh since we have bright sun instead of cloudy overcast.

Nicely done, colors are a bit more dynamic.

[JBW]

I tried this again today.
Light is a little more harsh since we have bright sun instead of cloudy overcast.

one photographers harsh another's vibrant. Much more to my taste and excellent focus.

[IzzieK]

Excellent !! I love it this time around...excellent focus and also the composition is great.

I tried this again today.
Light is a little more harsh since we have bright sun instead of cloudy overcast.

[Wavelength]

Beautiful again

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Thank you all.
The good news is I was doing some computer updating and now my photo resizer program is back to working like it should.
I'm almost ready to rock 'n roll again.

[Wavelength]