Coral Christmas Cactus

[Round Tuit]

Our Christmas cactus hadn't bloomed for a while. Earlier this week, this flower finally appeared.



Comments and critiques are welcomed.

[DanK]

Nicely composed.

Maybe add a touch more space on the left?

[Round Tuit]

Nicely composed.

Maybe add a touch more space on the left?

That would be easy to do and I will definitely look at it. However, I don't readily see how that would be an improvement.

[DanK]

It's all taste, of course, but I often find that an image pointed toward one side looks better with a bit of extra negative space in front of it. To me, this feels tight on the left side. However, I just looked at a bunch of my own images of flowers, and I didn't leave extra space more often than I did. I can't explain why in some cases, it seemed better.

[Geoff F]

That variety has rather orange flowers. Mine are a distinctly red colour.

For reliable flowering. Grow in good light but avoid direct sunlight. Reduce watering for a couple of months after flowering then water normally shortly before the expected flowering time. They can benefit from a period outside during the summer but keep in shade and avoid slugs/snails.

[The amateur]

In the photographs that André presents of flowers, it is not the first time I have had the impression that the background appears artificial, as if the flowers had been cut out from another image with a different background, whatever it might have been.
I find the outlines excessively defined, although that is certainly possible.
Furthermore, it seems to me that if the image is mirrored, the visual impact improves. Sometimes, an image arranged symmetrically can prove to be much more visually appealing.

Viewing the same scene from two such distinct perspectives is a reminder that visual art can be reinvented with simple gestures such as mirroring, transforming the familiar into something surprisingly new and even intriguing.
It is no coincidence that certain images are better understood when presented symmetrically after all, our reading is from left to right, which likely plays an important role here.

I could have experimented with this one, but I deliberately refrained, preferring to await a response to this observation first.
For now, I shall set aside Dan’s observation, which seems very apt and is further supported by the potential symmetry in this image.

[Round Tuit]

It's all taste, of course, but I often find that an image pointed toward one side looks better with a bit of extra negative space in front of it. To me, this feels tight on the left side. However, I just looked at a bunch of my own images of flowers, and I didn't leave extra space more often than I did. I can't explain why in some cases, it seemed better.

I almost always leave space ahead of people, animals or flowers in a rectangular frame. I seldom do for flowers in a square frame. Whether I do or not is mostly a gut feel for the specific image. For the image above, I've tried more space but prefer it as is. Strangely enough, I find that its mirror image is better with a little more space in front. As you say, it's a question of taste.

[Round Tuit]

That variety has rather orange flowers. Mine are a distinctly red colour.

For reliable flowering. Grow in good light but avoid direct sunlight. Reduce watering for a couple of months after flowering then water normally shortly before the expected flowering time. They can benefit from a period outside during the summer but keep in shade and avoid slugs/snails.

Thank you for the advice for stimulating the plant to flower. We have three of these and they all seem to flower at approximately the same time. We have a small red one and two large ones that have reached almost 20 inches in diameter; the orange one and a fuchsia coloured one whose colour is outside the gamut of the Adobe RGB space.

[Round Tuit]

In the photographs that André presents of flowers, it is not the first time I have had the impression that the background appears artificial, as if the flowers had been cut out from another image with a different background, whatever it might have been.
I find the outlines excessively defined, although that is certainly possible.
Furthermore, it seems to me that if the image is mirrored, the visual impact improves. Sometimes, an image arranged symmetrically can prove to be much more visually appealing.

Viewing the same scene from two such distinct perspectives is a reminder that visual art can be reinvented with simple gestures such as mirroring, transforming the familiar into something surprisingly new and even intriguing.
It is no coincidence that certain images are better understood when presented symmetrically after all, our reading is from left to right, which likely plays an important role here.

I could have experimented with this one, but I deliberately refrained, preferring to await a response to this observation first.
For now, I shall set aside Dan’s observation, which seems very apt and is further supported by the potential symmetry in this image.

Thank you Antonio for your observations.

My photographs of flowers against a black background are actually taken against a black or at least very dark background. Most of them are lit from behind the flower in order to show the fine texture of the petals. This lighting does create a very clear separation between the flower and the background.

It is interesting that you mention mirroring because this photo is a mirror image of the original photo that I took. I can't explain why but the original image looks better to me with a slightly different crop than this one.