Image Critique #2
Everyone like flowers, well, not everyone, but they certainly are a very popular subject for training your lens. Getting a good shot of a flower is not as easy as the good floral photographers make it look.
Lets look at this image that was submitted.
OK.... Let's talk about focus and depth of field. There is very little depth of field in this image. Almost none. The only part of the frame that is in focus, is the greenery in the background and the very back edge of the bloom. If you are only going to have one part of your image in focus, this isn't what you want. You would want the focus to be in the front, where people are going to see it first and concentrate on that.
There is a large blurry stamen (if my botanical biology isn't up to snuff and that isn't what you call that thing, I'm sure someone will let me know. But hey, I'm a photographer, not a horticultural expert.), sticking out from the middle of the photograph that just gets in my way everywhere that I try to look. BAM! there it is again! BAM! BAM! This blurriness is caused by being out of focus, not from camera shake. You can tell that because parts of the photograph in the way back are very sharp. If the camera was moving, it would have blurred everything.
The third thing is the lighting. Strange and flat. It looks like flash, but I can't swear to it. Direct, on camera flash, is very difficult to use in this type of situation. You have to at least bounce it or diffuse it if you think it is necessary. If it's a P&S, turn the flash off.
I'm going to take a guess and say that this was a small part of a much larger image. I don't see another explanation for how the point of focus could be this far off unless it was intentional and I don't think it was intentional.
To do this shot right, you need a tripod and natural diffused light. A hazy day or early in the morning/early in the evening will work the best. You need good depth of field which you will get from shooting somewhere between f8 and f11, maybe even smaller if necessary, depending on your lens and how close you are to the subject. This might cause your shutter speed to be longer than it should be for you to hand hold it (see previous blog post), so use your tripod and either a shutter cable or a timer to avoid camera shake.
I hope the submitter of this image will tell me if I'm right about the extreme crop and flash.
Bottom line: You can do better than this.
If you have an image you would like critiqued (after these last couple I think my supply might dry up), please email it to me as specified in this post.
Lets look at this image that was submitted.
OK.... Let's talk about focus and depth of field. There is very little depth of field in this image. Almost none. The only part of the frame that is in focus, is the greenery in the background and the very back edge of the bloom. If you are only going to have one part of your image in focus, this isn't what you want. You would want the focus to be in the front, where people are going to see it first and concentrate on that.
There is a large blurry stamen (if my botanical biology isn't up to snuff and that isn't what you call that thing, I'm sure someone will let me know. But hey, I'm a photographer, not a horticultural expert.), sticking out from the middle of the photograph that just gets in my way everywhere that I try to look. BAM! there it is again! BAM! BAM! This blurriness is caused by being out of focus, not from camera shake. You can tell that because parts of the photograph in the way back are very sharp. If the camera was moving, it would have blurred everything.
The third thing is the lighting. Strange and flat. It looks like flash, but I can't swear to it. Direct, on camera flash, is very difficult to use in this type of situation. You have to at least bounce it or diffuse it if you think it is necessary. If it's a P&S, turn the flash off.
I'm going to take a guess and say that this was a small part of a much larger image. I don't see another explanation for how the point of focus could be this far off unless it was intentional and I don't think it was intentional.
To do this shot right, you need a tripod and natural diffused light. A hazy day or early in the morning/early in the evening will work the best. You need good depth of field which you will get from shooting somewhere between f8 and f11, maybe even smaller if necessary, depending on your lens and how close you are to the subject. This might cause your shutter speed to be longer than it should be for you to hand hold it (see previous blog post), so use your tripod and either a shutter cable or a timer to avoid camera shake.
I hope the submitter of this image will tell me if I'm right about the extreme crop and flash.
Bottom line: You can do better than this.
If you have an image you would like critiqued (after these last couple I think my supply might dry up), please email it to me as specified in this post.
