Red-Striped Tulipsby
riversongComment by truogre: *Critique Club*
Hi!! Russell from the critique club here - lets get started!!
What I liked - Tulips are some of the coolest flowers, so many different colors and great strong stems make them easily posable. Here we have the same, great color and no distracting background to keep the viewer from seeing the flowers. Good composition too.
Problems - Lighting is number one, the bottom flower is so much brighter then the rest (to the point of blown-out in spots) it takes away from the rest of the arrangement which seems much darker. The background, while featureless is also suffering from blown highlights that take away from the leaves and several of the petals on the bottom flower. There is very little of the tulips texture(in the titles)showing on any of the flowers. Since this is one of the greatest things about this particular flower, getting it into the photo is a priority.
Lighting is the major issue here, might have worked better if there was more transition from the darker flowers on top and the bright on the bottom, possibly a strong diffuser of some kind would have worked to soften that light.
After looking at it a bit longer - I wonder if a closer shot of the upper four flowers and losing the one that is mostly hidden (leaving three great blooms) wouldn't have given it more impact. Great texture and color from the petals and great featureless background.
Overall your photo did well in this challenge, perhaps with a bit of lighting work I believe it could have done better and possibly even earned a ribbon - your on the right track for sure.
Something about the "jaggies" on the stems - since I don't know what your using for making adjustments (PS, elements, etc) I can't say for sure, but I believe they are due to sizing and the problems inherent with jpeg. If you are using PS or elements, play around with the "save for web" settings it might help.
Russ
Photographer found comment helpful.
