230_p9833.jpg
by C-Fox

Comment:
This is great! Almost as though the butterfly is saying "Touch me, I dare ya'". Nice capture.

The Swirly Kind
by amandalore

Comment:
You just keep getting better and better! Take advice from an old lady. Get as many nekkid' pix of yourself as you can while you're young and thin;)

Very creative shot with nice tones and great lines.

Stargazers
by qbicle

Comment:
I think this is quite an improvement over the first two you posted. Flowers, like this, are challenging because it takes a long focal length to get everything into focus. The Stamens are OOF, but other areas look pretty good, to me. You might try closing down the aperture a bit more to get a bigger focal length. I think you should be able to do this and still have the blurred BG.

Good lighting is a huge part of image quality. Direct light can cause a loss of detail that exacerbates focusing issues. I'd love to see what you could get shooting this flower with softer light and perhaps a reflector. I'm not much help because I use natural light, exclusively and don't have much experience.

Edit to add: I think a less centered composition might give it a boost, too.

Message edited by author 2006-07-24 16:22:55.

The Zen Fool
by riolobo

Comment:
Dang! I wish I could think of ideas like this. Right on the 1/3s! What I really like about this image is the statement it makes. It's one of those photographs where the title is essential for the image to make sense.

I love this setup and think that with a few improvements you'd have a top-notch shot and should even consider a series of these. The square crop works very well, here. (Of course I'm a rare fan of square crops). Here are my thoughts; take them for what they're worth:

I can see a couple of spots where the base material is showing. I think that this could have been avoided by putting the sand in a pan or somehow getting a thicker layer. That might have also given you deeper grooves which would have given the image more depth. I think the "gold" is the key element of the image and has not quite been done justice. I'd be in favor of some softer light, sharper focus, a lower angle and possibly a tighter crop. You might also get some good results with different DOF. Regardless of my nitpicks, it's quite interesting and gets high marks for creative thinking!

Pepperture
by rox_rox

Comment:
Thanks for the great comments everyone! And to answer the question about the colors, it's a decorative pepper plant covered with little peppers of varying colors. It took me about one minute to cut them off of the plant.

The arrangement took a little longer.

Jello Meets Fan
by Ken

Comment:
Great colors and very interesting. 9 from me.

swans1.jpg
by kevrobertson

Comment:
Great family portrait. They seem very proud.

hanabi4419
by Pug-H

Comment:
This is my favorite of your fireworks shots. I'm typically bored by fireworks, but yours are great. They look like sea anenomes or succulents. Very nice.

Organic
by GeneralE

Comment:
This is such an awesome shot! From the thumb I though it was a firework; then I opened it and read your Photographer's Comments.

IMG_4306_edit.jpg
by eschelar

Comment:
Wow Keiran!

You really spent a lot of time and effort on this. I'm going to follow your steps and see if I can get results as good as yours. Quite impressive.

Thanks for your help!
Roxanne