SOUTHERN BELLSby
bonnettComment by kteach: Greetings from the Critique Club!
First Impression:
Very unique flowers. Like the colors, good focus on the front flower. Seems a little dark.
Composition/Background:
I like the way you got the two full flowers, and the buds in the shot. The focused flower seems a bit too centered for me. Perhaps changing the angle slightly at which you shot this one, or cropping differently to get rid of some of the fencing. But personally, I think I like the feel of that fence/wood background. Depending on what angles you could have shot at, maybe using the spiral of the iron fence as a leading line into the picture with the flower in front of it?
Technicals:
Love the color and sharpness of the front flower. Perhaps a slightly wider dof to get the second flower in focus as well. Otherwise, I think you did well technically.
Post Processing:
Difficult to comment on the processing of this photo, since nothing is listed in the photgrapher comments. This would have been a good opportunity to bump the light in some of those darker areas though, unless you were deliberatly aiming for this type of lighting.
Overall:
In a challenge such as flowers, which allowed advanced editing, you need a shot that has a bit more "wow" to it in order to get those high scores. Voters get tired of looking at flower after flower, and while I think the color and technicals were good, there just wasn't enough pizzazz here to get voters to look for more than a second and click on that 5, which is where most of your votes were.
Keep up the good work, and looking forward to seeing more of your shots in future challenges!
I hope you found this critique helpful. Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions.
Photographer found comment helpful.