phalaenopsis

Inspired by all your great close up flower pics I thought I'd have a go too since the lights were up and a macro lens was on for this week's comp. entry. All C+C welcomed.

Set up was one flash head shooting through a white brolly, above and to the right of camera and a backlight with honeycomb and snoot. *IstDS 200ISO, 160th @ f13, Pentax F 28-80 at macro setting.

Superb, especially as I think white is the hardest colour to get right!

I like it....very nice

Technically great, and I love the composition a great deal.

I'd hang this on my wall.

Top Notch!javascript:emoticon('')

Excellent exposure, superb composition, very nice.

But , the backlight cast a shadow of the stem of the flower behind on the petal of the front flower, and now I've noticed it, my eye keeps getting drawn to it. Bit of dodging should sort it, I reckon. Or if you could set it up again, moving the backlight to the left should avoid the shadow.

Dan

Thanks for all your kind comments, Dan I've just noticed it too - stood at the other side of the room from the monitor and thought WTF! Everything is still set up and it looks like the back light is creating a shadow from a stem behind the petal. This is what I hate about studio flashes, or mine at any rate, the modelling lamps aren't strong enough to show things like this. Alternative? Hot lamps but they would have melted the ice in my other pic and wilted the flower and would only deliver something like f5.6.

Stand by, I'm going back in there. Hold the front page.

Ken

Excellent, reshooting is the best way!

Dan

Sorry to rain on the parade, but, erm, from those that like it...

... exactly why do you think the composition is good?

The centre of the foreground orchid doesn't look too sharp to me, and the OOF background one has the edge-on petal quite sharp, so for me it's a distraction.

I don't really understand the point of the way it's cropped, either.

It doesn't do much for me, sorry..

But I'd like to know why people think it's good.

oddly enough, I did notice, and it didn't really bother me.
since you are reshooting......
try one shot where the flower position/dof gets the background flower with the (what do you call it...Pistol?) colored bits in focus....

Well Chris, I like the bold crop, the angle of the front flower, the way the flower in the background gives you more info about the structure (as you're seeing a side view), the contrast between the black background and the white flower, the way that detail has been kept in the petals, the seperation of the little wiggly bits from the petal on the background flower, and the fact that it just looks nice to me.

Regarding the sharpness, I did wonder whether it was a little too far forward, but at this resolution it's so hard to tell which bits are critically/acceptably sharp that I didn't comment. The shadow was the main concern for me.

And you don't need a when you say it doesn't do much for you, and no need to apologise either - each to their own.

Dan

Thanks. I know technically an apology isn't necessary.. but I never enjoy raining on people's parade. And when everyone else is saying 'top notch', and 'superb', and I'm going... 'huh?', I usually assume I'm missing something - especially amongst the company here.

Usually I can see why people think something's good, even if I don't like it... so if others think there's merit that I can't see, in something, then I have the opportunity to learn something. So thanks for the elaboration.

I'll elaborate:
I thought the idea work nicely.
the two view points show the flower in an imaginative, unconventional composition.
it's a tough one to light.
there's lots of nice detial in the texture of the petals (even on the bits of the back flower).
and even the shadow, ties the foreground flower to the background flower, if it had not been there my first assumption would've been photoshop, and that would've made me wonder why the back flower wasn't more in focus.

I wouldn't be embarrassed to print that one on watercolor or canvass and hang it.

I think three flowers would've forced a more conventional composition...
but by having the option of extending the background black, along the top and right side, any gardening magazine editor might give that one serious consideration for a covershot....

Composition is excellent here....Very good idea..... thumps up.

Well, what a pathetic excuse that was about modelling lamps, the shadow was perfectly obvious when I walked around the back, a lesson learned about translucent subjects. So, here it is quickly re-shot. Couldn't get exactly the same composition - it appears that living things actually move - i'll stick with plastic ones in the future. Learned something about the DS when I rushed off to make this picture: I thought it had developed a fault, every time I switched it on it switched itself off again. Brief panic and the realised the card door was open. Must be to stop light getting in and wiping the card

Ken




EDIT:

By the time I'd re-shot and posted I didn't realise others had posted and a good debate as always. At the risk of being pedantic this isn't 'cropped' it is framed. 99.9% of the time I dont crop (moving picture background where it isn't an option) and for ME cropping is minor failure though I wouldn't judge anyone else by that measure. I had other ideas about the composition but I didn't think my wife was going to appreciative about severe pruning with the kitchen scissors. Of course, imagining an image and realising it are very different things.

I'm reminded of working with someone who had visited Albert Speer (Hitler's architect) in Spandau prison. He asked Speer how he coped with being denied drawing materials by his Russian gaolers. When the guards weren't looking he invited my friend to lie down and look at his herb garden - architecture in macro.