Thistle and beeby
trainComment by Harz_Joerg: Greetings from the Critique Club
Initial thoughts/My opinion
Fine image, fitting the challenge very well. It has some technical issues though.
Content/Composition
Insects and flowers work always well, especially for this challenge. In contrast to many other "simple" flowers the thistle is something special: due to it's thorns it's a "stronger", less lovely flower. However, you composed it showing how beautiful it is.
Unfortunately the bee is turning its back on the viewer, but there was probably not much to do against this "camera"-unfriendly behaviour.
I thing you cropped the image a bit too tight at the top while the lower border is too low: the bee and colourful part of the thistle are somewhat squeezed in the upper left edge.
Camera work -technically
Focus seems fine, at least when judging it by looking at the thistle. DOF is set well too. Same for light and white balance. That the bee is fuzzier is probably due to its fast movement.
Digital Processing - Technical
Maybe I'm wrong, but the image looks like being a small section out of the original picture. It looks over sharpened, at least at the thistle and the grainy structure of the background might be caused by the sharpening too. Increasing the colour saturation a bit might have been nice too.
Fits the challenge
Yes it does very well fit to NG.
Good luck for your upcoming submissions
Photographer found comment helpful.
