Phlox
by Gordon

Comment by jen1979:
very cool!

Impressionist canvas
by Gordon

Comment by e301:
Hi Gordon, your Critique Club moment is at hand ...

I'm not really going to make any technical comments - you're obviously fully in control of your camera and get pretty much the image you chose.

So I get to be artistic. The first thing that struck me was the odd mirror-like feeling with the two flowers bottom right (and this gives the lie slightly to you 'unconventional composition' comment: the TWO of them are right on the thirds line). I find that a quite alluring effect - though it's disturbed by the left of frame flower, which moves into the field rather than existing wholly within or out of it as do the others. That, visually, produces a tension that might otherwise have been missing from the shot.

The in-focus flower does have the fragility you speak about - perhaps most because of the light - that direct sunlight (presumably), emphasises the thinness of the petals, the transparency of them, the fact that they are so breakable - rather than the effect of the 'accepted' diffused light which simply brings out the colour. This i think works well with the previous observation - that movement through the field of focus is contrasted again with the fragility here to make another tension; a friend once said about making radio programmes that one should never produce anything where only one thing is going on.

What there also is here is some sort of evolution of shape: as the flowers come into focus, there's an intersting progression from complete blob to the complex definition of the flower; a little like watching it grow.

Which is enough for now: that's an attempt to be specific about why I like this shot - I didn't vote, and couldn't tell you what I'd have scored it, as I doubt I'd have spent as long looking at it as I have now.

a down-side (there has to be one): the 'other' colours in the background - I think it would have been cleaner, and keot attention more purely to the flowers and those purple shapes, had there been simply green in the background, and not the white and pale purple moments too.

Good luck

Ed

Hommage à Film Noir
by Gordon

Comment by eloise:
I love that. It's wildly funny. :-> Especially with the difference in pose between those 'standing' and the one prone in the middle. It's hard to give inanimate objects personality, but this succeeds.

Neck Plug: Interface Detail
by Gordon

Comment by Jacko:
wow very cool. Love the curves and sharpness. Good luck. Jacko. 10

Phlox
by Gordon

Comment by kavamama:
Love the subject. The soft focus in the foreground is somewhat distracting, tho.

Neck Plug: Interface Detail
by Gordon

Comment by e301:
Like this very much. Not sure that there is quite enough DOF - the focus is just drifting on the far edge of the 'thing', but not enough to make it seem deliberate. Reflections are good, the lines and composition are excellent. The subject: perhaps too representative rather than interpretive for me.

Phlox
by Gordon

Comment by clues56:
I think I would have focused on the flower and eliminated the grasshopper. The colors are great.

Phlox
by Gordon

Comment by joshua:
this grasshopper is dead.. you have tampered with nature and that is a sin. go beg for forgiveness...7

Phlox
by Gordon

Comment by qachyk:
The front focal blur rather eye-drawing, which works in the sense that it draws you more to the red/green contrast but does sort of take away from any focus on the bug.

Neck Plug: Interface Detail
by Gordon

Comment by vtruan:
It fits, I think...