13 replies to this topic

[Malice]

This is a flower of Silene latifolia ("bladder" or "white campion") with a small insect (please don't ask me what kind this is) just leaving the centre of the flower.

 

 

I'm a little on the fence about this one myself. In one moment I think the emptiness of the mostly featureless background makes a good contrast for the flower itself. In the next moment, I find it quite bland.

 

Therefore I'd appreciate your thoughts about this.

 

Other comments are equally appreciated.

 

 

 

Picture taken with a Nikon D3100 and a Nikon AF-S DX 35mm 1:1.8. Shutter: 1/200 sec; Aperture: f / 4.0; ISO: 100

 

 

Thank you for looking in!

 

 

 

[Merco_61]

If only the DX 35 had a little bit smoother background rendering... Have you tried another crop, say 5:4 or even square? I like the idea, and shoot quite a bit like that, but the leftmost maroonish blob detracts for me.

[mikew]

Isolation is nice and we all see crops different but for me there is a little too much space on the left.

[Malice]

Picking up the well founded suggestion of cropping differently, here a go with a square format.

 

First, this is the uncropped image:

 

 

As you can see, the overall picture isn't as dark and gloomy as my first try at cropping. I lost a lot of cropping options though, by not paying enough attention when taking the exposure and cutting of that flower on the lower right part of the picture. I.e. my intentions with cropping are in this case: get rid of that mistake in composition and make the detail with the small bug a little more pronounced.

 

 

This is what it can look like with a square crop:

 

 

Since I found that piece of the tubular part of the flower remaining in the picture on the lower right corner still distracting/disturbing, I tried to stamp that away with the repair tool in LR.

 

 

Square crop, version 2:

 

 

 

I think the square crop is an overall improvement (so thanks for the idea), because it removes some of the murkiness or "mud" on the left hand side. Since I rarely print pictures and mostly display them on digital screens, I tend to forget to go for any format that's not roughly screen shaped (that's also why I rarely do portrait-orientation shooting; these pictures just don't work well on screens in landscape-orientation).

 

 

A question on the side: is there a way to have smaller previews of linked images in a thread? I find it difficult to get an overview of an image, when it's displayed so large.

Edited by Malice, 12 June 2016 - 01:24 AM.

[Merco_61]

If you have your photo in your gallery space, you can use the image linking feature you seem to be using. The photo will present like this:

 

 

You can use the My Media linking tool instead to get it to look like this:

 

You can use the Attachment uploader as well, but that way tends to strip the EXIF. It looks like this:

 

The forum uses BBCode as well, so you can host your photos elsewhere and get them to post big. This is nice if you're running out of gallery space and don't want to give a donation to get more space.

[Malice]

If you have your photo in your gallery space, you can use the image linking feature you seem to be using.

 

That's exactly what I'm currently using.

 

I will have to give the media link method a try.

 

Which reminds me, I still haven't cleaned up my flickr space.

 

Nice picture, btw. 

[TBonz]

Not sure if you've tried it already, but I might try a Portrait crop on that one with the flower and stem above...it would reduce the amount of background - don't mind the background, just think there was too much of it...

[Ron]

Having looked at all the images, the one thing that bothers me the most is the part of the flower stem that continues upward from the flower. I would remove that in Photoshop (you really need layers for that and, unfortunately, Lightroom doesn't as yet support them). The background problems can be reduced by lowering your background saturation using either Lightroom or, preferably, Photoshop. I might also try adding additional gaussian blur to the background. And, I think I would use a standard 4:3 crop and place the flower in the upper right hand portion of the crop. Using a rule of thirds grid it would be squarely at the upper right cross.

 

Of course, my suggestions may not pan out. This is one of those try and decide things.

 

--Ron

[Malice]

Thank you very much for the input!

 

I can definitely try the portrait crop and the 4:3 crop with the flower in the upper right 1/3-intersection, but the Photoshop magic sounds a little like something beyond my skills.

 

As soon as I have come up with something new, I'll post it here.

[Malice]

So, the different crops, I tried out right away (I hope it's okay, to "double-post" instead of editing the former entry).

 

1) 3x4 Portrait orientation:

 

 

 

 

2) 4x3 wider crop:

 

 

 

 

3) 4x3 close crop:

 

 

 

 

I kind of like the last one, as it eliminates a lot of the background. The disadvantage is, that this is such a small part of the exposure that only a little more than 2.5 mega pixel are left. And it seems that I have some artifacts in there from the jpg conversion.

 

Interesting point on the side (for me), I just noticed this week: the image rendering in LR4 is not identical between the full screen view in the library and the full screen view in the develop module (my apologies, if the terminology is off, but I'm using LR in german). I found that quite irritating (even more so, since haven't seen it earlier and I'm using LR for a quite a while already).

 

@TBonz and Ron: is this roughly what you head in mind regarding the crops?

 

For the other suggestions, I will need (significantly) more time, as I will have to find out how to actually do these things with LR or PS.

[Kenafein]

I like the 4/3 close crop best.  The problem with with this shot, IMHO, is that the stem is substantially distanced from the flower so it's out of focus, but it is still part of the subject.  It doesn't just blend into the background.  Frequently, you can have parts of the same flower, branch or other subject out of focus, but it doesn't work for me here. The stem is demanding too much attention.  It's kind of like a portrait where one eye is in sharp focus and the other is blurred.  There also seems to be a good bit of hand shake inducing extra blur.  For the handshake you could have doubled the shutter speed by upping to ISO 200, or using a tripod, but keeping the stem in focus would have sacrificed your bokeh.  White flowers are also a bit more difficult to shoot.  Good luck and have fun.  

[TBonz]

#1 is basically what I was thinking...I was thinking 2:3 Portrait, but either way works...I do understand Kenafein's point and understand the point about #3 probably being the best of the bunch.  I might also try a square crop, centering the flower and getting in as close as you feel you can without issues...Just a thought to try out...

[Ron]

I also like the third one... with, of course, the exception of the stem that continues upwards and out of the frame. However, I do understand about Photoshop. I didn't know if you had that application available or not. For whatever it's worth, you can achieve many of the same effects using Photoshop Elements. 

 

Also, since you're using LR4, you don't have access to the radial gradient filter. Using that would have been my next suggestion... basically you would place the flower inside the radial gradient where you could brighten it a little compared to the background. You could also do additional things to the rest of the image that would make them less obtrusive. You can still use the brush tool to brighten the flower and/or darken the background... it's just a bit more work. You might also try going negative on the clarity slider. This can mimic the effect you get with a glamor glow filter. No guarantee, of course, but it's something to play around with. You may hit on something you like.   

 

--Ron

[hatman]

Of them all I prefer the #1, 3x4 portrait version. The white OOF flower in the background provides a nice balance to the subject flower.