Ice

[Gerry F]

DSC06661 by gerald fraser, on Flickr

[Wavelength]

A cool lovely shot

[Gerry F]

Thanks Nandakumar. One of things that I have learnt from the Corona lockdown is that you don't have to stop taking pictures. If you use your imagination there are many opportunities in the home or nearby. These were just ice cubes from the fridge ice maker in a glass dish and exposed to the sun on my balcony. I had a good time taking photos with my macro lens and changing the light direction.

[Manfred M]

Gerry - as a concept, I like what you are trying to do, but as an image, I don't think ii is as effective as you might like.

Nothing really grabs the viewer's attention to pull ones eye into the image. I'm not even sure if any of the shot is in focus.

[xpatUSA]

I'm not even sure if any of the shot is in focus.

Hard to tell, what with CiC's resampling and what appears to be a smooth surface of melting ice with no texture to gauge the degree of focus by ...

[Manfred M]

Hard to tell, what with CiC's resampling and what appears to be a smooth surface of melting ice with no texture to gauge the degree of focus by ...

Usually I would expect to see some inclusions that have a degree of sharpness and I see none Ted. Auto focus lenses tend to have problems locking focus on subjects like this one. I might be wrong, but the image seems to be too soft.

[Gerry F]

The first picture was to create a kind of mood rather than to have a focus. I was using manual focus on a 90mm macro lens. Here is one with a more focused area which has a completely different effect and in my opinion is less interesting:

#2
DSC06568 by gerald fraser, on Flickr

[Manfred M]

Gerry, of the two images you have posted, I find that the second one has more potential. I suspect one can find some images that are completely blurred or out of focus that work well, but I can't remember a single one that stuck with me. Like these images, they tended to be abstract.

At least this image has a few areas of definition and contrast that I can lock in on and then explore the shot. Try a bit more work in post to see if you can pull more out of it and eliminate some of the distracting parts. Adding a bit more blue would be worth considering as well.

[Wavelength]

The second image is sharp; adding some blue has good effect upon it; but no quality of ice remains on it; it looks like metal plate... i felt first one is visually more pleasing...

[DanK]

It's all a matter of taste, but the first one doesn't work for me either. Even macro work that leaves most of the image out of focus generally has a key point of interest in sharp focus. One example is Varina Patel's macros of flowers, https://visualwilderness.com/fieldwo...tunning-photos. A more extreme example is some of Olivia Parker's later macros. This image doesn't seem to have that. In addition, it lacks both color contrast and tonal contrast. Combining those three makes the image vague and amorphous.