Flowers - not my forte

[Jim A]

I am not good with flowers, though mostly lack of experience. I do not even know what this is called, however it was interesting to me. Seems over-exposed in the lower portion and a lack of definition in the (tendril?) coming out from the centre area to the left? What could I have done better? eg bracketed?

Flower in Hamilton by Jim Air, on Flickr

[JBW]

Hi Jim, I'm guessing that you were shooting outside? Perhaps a different time of day with less direct sunlight.

I am beginning to understand that some flowers work best up close and some work best further back. It's more of an art than a science. Because I'm into macro I would get in closer.

Straight down is a tough flower shot. Not undoable just tough.

Hope that helps.

[Jim A]

Hi Jim, I'm guessing that you were shooting outside? Perhaps a different time of day with less direct sunlight.

I am beginning to understand that some flowers work best up close and some work best further back. It's more of an art than a science. Because I'm into macro I would get in closer.

Straight down is a tough flower shot. Not undoable just tough.

Hope that helps.

It certainly does, thanks Brian! It was outside and the time of day was at 1.17pm, New Zealand time, not a good time at all to take photos. Still, it was two years ago and I am now more aware, though just as lazy 🤔 😪

[xpatUSA]

I am not good with flowers, though mostly lack of experience. I do not even know what this is called, however it was interesting to me. Seems over-exposed in the lower portion and a lack of definition in the (tendril?) coming out from the centre area to the left? What could I have done better? eg bracketed?

Flower in Hamilton by Jim Air, on Flickr

Hard to comment - EXIF has been stripped out of the 1024x1022px OP image.

Was it cropped, resized or both?

I would frame a flower like that about 1/3 or 1/4 frame (gives more DOF), raw for highlight recovery, crop to taste. f/8 to f/16 with de-convolution sharpening in post for the stamen detail recovery.

Shutter Speed Bracketing can help , or use a separate incident light-meter.

[Shadowman]

Nice one.

[rudi]

…. I do not even know what this is called, ...... What could I have done better? …..

I think this is a cactus flower….

Perhaps you could have shaded the flower by your body, a reflector....
Out in de field, I often use a shoot-thru umbrella, to diffuse/soften the ambient light when necessary...HTH

[DanK]

Glad to see you trying flowers! the more, the merrier.

Re lighting: direct sunlight is usually not ideal flowers, and white flowers are particularly tough in this respect. A small diffuser can help, something like this.

Re shooting down into deep flowers: DOF is a big problem with closeups of flowers, particularly deep ones, unless you are deliberately trying to keep some of the flower out of focus. My solution is to focus stack. That is really hard to do outside unless there is no wind because wind makes the images unaligned, but it's doable sometimes. Mostly, I do real macros of flowers indoors, partly for that reason.

[Geoff F]

Some useful advice has already been given. Flowers are much more difficult than you would expect.

For me, this flower needs to either be wider with the whole of those petals visible or cropped a little tighter to concentrate more on the central area.