PETALS

[FUJI]

Spotted at the local florists the other day.......................processed in CS3:

Best viewd LARGE.....Click on pic:

FUJI

[KateW]

Beautiful! Lovely depth of field.

[Kobione]

Love the subtle colour in this, Fuji.

[stevedevil]

Nothing really on focus to grab the eye, the whole image is very soft?

Its far too blurry for me,

Sorry

[FUJI]

Nothing really on focus to grab the eye, the whole image is very soft?

Its far too blurry for me,

Sorry

Ah! ......that was the idea Steve.............those very distinctive blooms were set in a vase outside our local florists, in the original you can see the textured brown wrapping paper, string plus a little of the background.....so to create the deliberate .....Soft-Look......I made good use of the Gaussian Blur tool in CS3.

Again.....a situation where the photographer has little choice about background.........I guess I could have purchased the arrangement to photograph indoors at home as a well composed flower study.....but that would have been expensive.

I appreciate your honest comments and opinions.

FUJI

[Guest DaveW]

Things don't always need to be sharp Steve (never thought I would say that after always trying to get them so!). Lets call it a moody flower portrait and as with human portraits a diffusion filter is sometimes used over the lens for effect (including Vaseline smeared on a clear filter) or to hide the ladies wrinkles, thereby softening the image. However the effect has to appear intentional, not just look like bad photography.

I quite like the image Fuji in this case, though like Steve I normally like things sharp. The image is definitely in focus, so the softening is obviously intentional rather than mis-focusing.

The thing I don't like to see in most flower photographs is when the nearest petals are out of focus due to poor use of depth of field, unless only the centre of the flower (stamens and stigma) are obviously being highlighted up very close for effect. Out of focus foreground objects always annoy the eye more than out of focus ones in the background. In Fuji's case everything is in focus.

If you are interested in flower photography there is a nice article here:-

http://www.rainbowspirit.com/articles/simple-guide-to-better-wildflower-macrophotography

DaveW

[Heather]

Fuji another stunner ! your getting good at these flower shots. Love the soft look youve given it.. very romantic :)

[stevedevil]

Thanks Fuji,

A little description when posting the image would have helped the "Looker" get into your camera with you, as otherwise we dont really know what you are trying to achieve, so advice / comments could wander a little from the aspect that you wanted to achieve..

Thanks Dave W, Info always accepted