baldemort1892
from midlands, England

 

Hi Baldemort

Love these flowers and like the shot - crit I would have is that I think it is too tight in the frame and may have benefitted by having a bit of a border around it, or when you take it again have a bit more surrounding foliage in..I also think I would have taken out the petal hanging down in the background - don't think it adds to the shot and may distract from the main petal...see attachment...I would have left in the surrounding foliage as it does give context..

Would definitely take more and hopefully in better light...I feel you will get a more even crisp image as well with playing around with it..good luck my friend..
Hope this helps

Pablo

Attached Images

orchid4.jpg (141,4 KB, 8 views)

Hi Pablo. Thanks for the comments, my friend. Personally I agree with you about surrounding foliage so i'll give it a go on the weekend and allow some of the rest of the plant in with maybe a greener background. It's quite a sparse plant though with very little foliage apart from the flowers, more of which should bloom by the weekend. Wasn't sure what to do with the camera aperture either as I thought it would be nice to show DOF, but then maybe this loses crispness, or do you think this is just due to poor light and hence lack of contrast and directional lighting? Thanks mate.

Bal

Hello again mate
(oh no its him again...lol)

Great start. Its not so much the exposure as the colour cast that makes it look darker. Add a few stops to the lens and even more detail will come in because you will have added depth of field. I agree with Paul that pulling back a little would help. Great to see you are thinking out of the box by using a lamp (which will give you the cast). Maybe try a black background to 'lift' it even more. All that said its a great start/good foundation to launch yourself from with this kind of pic.
I have also added a two click edit from photoshop.

Attached Images

orchid42.jpg (232,4 KB, 8 views)

Thanks for the advice and crit, it really helps. The daft thing is, i'm normally really funny about white balance and like it spot on, but when i adjusted it with photoshop, it seemed a bit cold when i removed the orangey cast from the incandescent lamp, so i left it in there. Bad mistake! After seeing your edit, i can see that it's not cold, it's just right and correct and gives the orchid much more life and removes that flat look that my original shot has. Nice edit. I'll give it a go in better light and include more of the rest of the plant over the weekend.

It may have gone cold because of the way you removed the cast. There are so many ways to rectify a cast and some of them can affect certain aspects of the whole images colour mate. A good way to get into colour correction is to find the neutral area in any given pic as your starting point. But ultimately it is best to get it right straight from cam. Easier said than done
I have just finished culling a customers wedding and the guy who shot it had awful white balance issues. We are all in the same boat. If its tricky light (weddings) I use the colorright disc for both WB and neutral grey readings. It still takes time mind you.
I am looking forward to the next one you pull out of the bag. Its a nice image!

Lovely Edit Tco.......Isn't this site just great..........generally as humans we struggle to take other peoples criticism of 'what we do' and can shy away from believing others can do better...here critique is freely given and taken...really making me think about others areas of my life.....

Pablo

Its always been the same here mate. If people can help they will. Of course there is a difference between critiquing and criticism but as long as the OP has put it in the crit section and any help offered is well intended and comes across as such...then its all good and everyone is happy. People should feel free to crit anyones image. We have covered this a lot in the past. Have a gander through the archives. You have made such a good point Paul.

Its a great place!

Apologies to Balder' for going slightly off topic.

No worries mate. Would you mind telling me exactly how you edited that? Was it just white balance or anything else?

I use three methods of colour correction when doing work for other photographers mate. I used none of these. In CS4 I simply took a leaf out of Barry (ogogogogogogfmoles) book as he did the other week with someones pic.

I just clicked the auto colour button (click one) and then I clicked again on an action of my own which splits the highlights and the shadows and adds detail (click two).

Auto colour used to be frowned upon in the earlier incarnations of p/shop. But it is always worth a quick click now and again to see what it throws up.

Simple!