Mothers Day Flowers
by kirtiebu

Comment by mandyturner:
wonderful colors and the detail is outstanding

Mothers Day Flowers
by kirtiebu

Comment by marmalade1121:
Great detail.

Mothers Day Flowers
by kirtiebu

Comment by whagerbaumer:
A nice catch of the bug. Lighting and composition could be improved significantly. A 5.

Mothers Day Flowers
by kirtiebu

Comment by leesc:
I'm not sure how this fits with the theme, but it's a beautiful photograph. There is a great amount of detail, and the colors, though muted, are pleasing.

Mothers Day Flowers
by kirtiebu

Comment by msdoubletrouble:
very nice clarity and colors

Mothers Day Flowers
by kirtiebu

Comment by Beetle:
I like the flowers and the bug, but the connection to the challenge is tentative at best.

9 ct Gold Bracelet
by kirtiebu

Comment by TooCool:
From the Critique Club:

This is a very nicely composed shot using a great piece of jewelry as a subject. The subject has great textures that with the help of good imaginative lighting would really pop out of the image. That said...

I think what hurts this image the most are two things. The focus and the lighting.

In a shot that is intended to highlight an object like this, you have to be very careful with the focus. You want the highlight of the subject to be in as sharp a focus as possible. In this piece, the highlight of the subject is the heart shaped pendant. This area of the shot is not very crisp. The loop of chain to the front (in relation to the pendant in this composition) of the shot is also important to the piece. It helps set this piece of jewelry apart from other not so nice pieces. This loop of chain is even softer than the pendant. This is a bit distracting. By moving your focal point to just in front of the pendant itself and using enough DOF (smaller f/stop setting in the camera) your main parts of the subject would be in better focus and bring the viewers eye to where you want it to fall. Did you sharpen the shot after resizing? This is a very important step in post processing photos for challenges. The act of resizing the shot tends to soften the focus and you need to fine tune the actual submission after making it presentation size.

You have the right idea in your lighting scheme as presented here. You have the primary light falling from the front and side of the subject. Lighting a subject like this is a tricky thing to do. You want to have enough light to make the subject look nice, but not so much light as to create blown out highlights. A good way to achieve this is through the use of some kind of light diffuser. An easy way to diffuse light is to hang a white sheet between your light source and the subject. Just remember that the diffuse light will be not as bright as direct light and will tend to make the colors duller. Another lighting technique that would help out here would be to have another light on the other side of your subject. This would help to soften the shadows on the cloth under the subject. It would also even out the lighting making your camera expose the shot better and helping to smooth out the highlites. I am not a lighting expert, but what I would try here would be to place the other light on the shadow side of your subject and either use a smaller wattage than your main light or move the light farther away from the subject. This will create fill light and leave the highlites where they are. It will also help to put more overall light on the subject giving you much more vivid colors. Don't forget though that anyway that you light the subject you still will probably have to play around with the levels in post processing to bring out the most color that is there.

Overall a very nice shot with a couple of minor technical problems. With a jewelery type shot though, these minor things are what will prevent a nice shot from becoming a great one. I hope you take my suggestions and play around with reshooting this. If you decide to do so, please post your results so we can see!
TC

9 ct Gold Bracelet
by kirtiebu

Comment by NathanWert:
Maybe shift the Focal point closer to the pendant. Right now it looks like it's back on the band.

9 ct Gold Bracelet
by kirtiebu

Comment by Steveinnz:
Good depth of field, maybe a darker background may have set it off better

9 ct Gold Bracelet
by kirtiebu

Comment by charliebaker:
Focus issues here and background would work better in black or another complimentary color like purple. Beautiful piece of jewelry and nice composition.