Water lilly

[Chataignier]

[Manfred M]

Nice, simple and effective composition. The shallow depth of field is effective.

It would have been nice to use a polarizing filter here to reduce the "hot" lily petals in the background.

[mugge]

I like the composition. I guess many photographers would zoom in on the water lilly and that would be it: a water lilly in close up.

There is, to my mind, an annoying 'dark spot' 30mm above the lilly
Cheers Ole

[Chataignier]

I agree with Ole, that dark spot was annoying, so I've removed it.

[DanK]

I think the image of the flower itself is stunning, but the surroundings are a real distraction for me. I agree with Manfred that a CPL would have helped, but it might not be enough. you have a lot of very bright, almost blown out material at the top left that is substantially larger than the flower itself. I also think the balance is off--to much negative space at the top.

I fiddled with this to see what I could do, but I am not very keen on what I got. I used a brush on a duplicate layer with multiple blend mode to try to recover a little detail in the bright areas, did some dodging and burning, added a mild vignette, and cropped to change the balance and get rid of some of the distracting white area. With a very quick edit, ended up with this:

[Chataignier]

Yes, interesting Dan. I quite like what you have done, but I find the crop less satisfying even though it help by removing some of the bright area.
What worked best for me was a radial gradient around the flower intersected with a linear gradient to reduce background brightness but mainly at the top. I then tried adding a vignette but ended up using a brush to "vignette" selectively.
I think I'll come back to this in a few days - cant see the wood for the trees right now.

[billtils]

A bit of a challenge in this one! Yes, the area at the top is too eye-catching but pretty well any reduction diminishes how well the flower stands out from the background. Of the options tried so far, perhaps a tighter crop at the top may be the way to go? Either way it is indeed an attractive image though - nicely seen a captured David.