I do a wee bit of stock photography as a hobby and today I thought I'd try taking a shot of a beautiful pink gerbera flower (part of a £3 bunch bought at Asda last night!). All comments, criticism and advice welcome as always. Thanks for looking.

Fabulous punchy colours. Love them!

Thanks for the comments folks. Here they are a bit bigger....

Wonderful clarity. Beautiful.

I picked up a copy of Digital SLR Photography magazine this morning and over a coffee in Starbucks I was inspired by an article on taking indoor photos and "fun with refraction". I followed the article (almost to the letter) to reproduce these images. They're not a patch on the one in the magazine but I didn't imagine they would be! I'm fairly happy with how it turned out though for a first attempt.

The article said you need a 150mm Macro lens but I had to settle for my Tamron 70-300 on macro setting.

So, what is it?

Well, take one white cup or mug (he used a rolled up piece of white card in a tube shape) and pop some Smarties sweets in the bottom. Place the clear lid of a CD case on top and then spray liberally with water from a spray bottle. Then set up your camera on a tripod, pointing right down at the top of the cup and focus manually(the best you can) on the image of the sweets refracted inside the water droplets. Et voila!

(Bonus - you get to eat the props once you've finished!)

I remember reading in a photography book that professional photographers are no different to amateurs. They take loads of shots that just aren't up to scratch. The secret is, they only show people the good ones. So, no shame in that! It doesn't detract from how great these shots are.

Terrific shots. I agree- doesn't appear to be anything wrong with your focussing skills.

Nope, Photomatix didn't complain at all. I'm fairly shakey-handed but I guess the shake-reduction really helps! I chose the "align using features" (or whatever its called). I believe that identifies edges and shapes in the image in order to align them. Seems to work fairly well.

This is the little village of West Weymss, Fife. Five exposures (-7,-3,0,+3,+7), all handheld then processed in Photomatix Pro.

Oooh - stunning robin shots Josh. Absolutely brilliant.