Carnations

[billtils]

Perhaps "frustrations" would have been a better title. This started out as a table-top scenario to capture a small brown earthenware vase or pot. I placed a red and a white carnation in it to add some colour, and tried a range of backgrounds but didn't like any. Attention then moved to the flowers with some variations in the lighting and shooting with either the 90mm Tamron macro or the Nikon 50mm. After two half days I decided to give up and take the vase + flowers back to the house (the table top set up is in a small room partitioned off at the end of the garage). I put the vase down on the sleeper steps to lock the door and when I bent down to pick it up thought there just may be a shot there and fired off a few, one of which is shown here (taken with the 50mm Nikon at f4.5, selected to soften the background but expecting some loss of detail in the flowers).

C&C of course welcome.

[Shadowman]

If the subject is the pot then I would showcase more of it, perhaps what is going on is you starting adding more impressive elements (the flowers, the textured background) and the pot is becoming less important. If the pot is still your main subject then I would either eliminate the flowers or put them in the background, shoot wide open and use the flowers as an offsetting pattern. Do you plan to print this image, I ask because I think the red flower would be a bit too hot to print, you may have to tone down the reds to get a good print and also to knock back a bit of the warmth of the colors. I like how the whitish flower looks.

[billtils]

Thanks John. I agree with all you say.

[Geoff F]

I suspect, Bill, that you are going to have potential exposure issues from the surface of that vase no matter what you do. Some very careful lighting will be required.

This image, with flowers, is too complicated to work well. I suspect that a plain background and less leaves might give satisfactory results, but this type of scene is always tricky; or at least I find any 'still life' scenes difficult to compose and expose.

[billtils]

I suspect, Bill, that you are going to have potential exposure issues from the surface of that vase no matter what you do. Some very careful lighting will be required.

This image, with flowers, is too complicated to work well. I suspect that a plain background and less leaves might give satisfactory results, but this type of scene is always tricky; or at least I find any 'still life' scenes difficult to compose and expose.

Geoff: Yes the combination does not work at all well. Back to basics: here's the vase on its own. I was going to do one of the carnation by itself too, but too late.

[Wavelength]

Very nice; i liked the bokeh too; I think floral images are best in vertical frame, then landscape; sqaure is not a good match, my feeling only