A lonely survivorby
KrisbyComment: Greetings from the Critique Club!
First Impression:
This is a nice shot, but doesn't necessarily have that "Wow!" factor that seems to bring in the high scores around here.
Compostion/Background:
I think you've placed the main subject well in the shot. Perhaps placing it a bit lower would follow the rule of thirds more closely, but if you went too much lower you would lose the leaves on the flower that you were shooting, and I like those. The background is good, as far as its coloring that doesn't distract from the subject, but I think a shallower dof could have helped to blur some of it out which would have put more focus on the flower itself.
Technicals:
As you noted in your photographer comments, you realize that your lighting is off, and it gives this shot a bit of a flat look. This is an area that I struggle with as well, and I find it easier to play around with lighting inside where I have more control. But back to this shot, perhaps playing with the flash, or a simple reflector could help. What I do like about the lighting you used is that you didn't just put the flash on or shoot in the middle of a sunny day and blow out the highlights of the white flower. So I think you're already understanding some of the important aspects of lighting.
Going back to the shallower dof, you used an aperture of f/7.1 which gives a relatively shallow dof, but bumping to to f/3.5 would have given you an even shallower dof, and an even more out of focus background. However, in order to do that, the shutter speed would have been too slow to hand hold, and a tripod would have been necessary.
Post Processing:
Clearly there have been varying thoughts on the use of the border here from other commenters, so I'll start with that. I like borders, and I like the use of a white border inside the shot. I think it works nicely here. However, I think it might have been a bit too thick and distracting for some voters. Perhaps a simple stroke of just a few pixels would have worked better. The other thing I noticed in your post processing is the extra rows of pixels to the right and bottom of the shot. It looks like you cropped the shot, but accidentally cropped outside the area of the photo, so you ended up with blank pixels in those areas.
Overall:
I think the 5.01 this shot received was partially due to the challenge it was in. In a challenge where voters are voting on hundreds of flower pictures, you need to really wow them in order to get the higher scores. You seem to know where some of your weaknesses are, so maybe reading up on some of the tutorials here or some of the learning threads in the forums would help you. Here is a thread on landscape photography where lightning was one of the first topics covered.
Learning Thread - Landscape Photography
As for learning your camera, take it out of Auto mode and just start shooting and playing around. Look back at the EXIF data for the pictures to see what you changed and what you like best. Good luck in your future challenges! :)
Feel free to PM me if you have any questions or comments about this critique!
Photographer found comment helpful.
