I critique with reluctance as I wonder who am I to judge other's work. Instead, I will tell you how I work with close-up flower shots. I do agreat deal of prep work, trimming and moving unnecessary foliage or wilted blooms out of the way before I short the first shot. I have nothing against PP, having started photography a long time ago with film and doing lots of darkroom magic, however, my goal, when possible is to have exactly what I want in the lens, composed and exposed exactly the way I want. I am left, hopefully, with an uploaded photo requiring little cropping and maybe a bit of fine tuning on saturation or contrast.

Whoops, left out my favorite: number one, great mood shot, very somber.

I love old cemeteries. In comparison, our Florida cemeteries are new, the older ones established in the late 1800's. There are two I visit a couple of times a year, one in St. Petersburg ( the Greenwood Cemetary) and the other in Tampa (Old City Cemetary near Ybor City, a ompsite of several). We also visit cemeteries in any city we visit as there is much a Cemetary will tell you about the area.

The sensibilities of the public change over the years. My father was a prizewinning photojournalist who started his career as a Signal Corps photographer in WWII and retired after being the Managing Editor of some of the bigger newspapers in the country. In the 50's, on a Father's Day, a photo of his ran on the front page. A horrific wreck on a local bridge, resulted in the death of a small boy. The father, who was driving, was drunk and speeding. The photo clearly shows the child, but there was a heartbreaking tenderness in the shot, nonetheless, and the story sought to shock all drivers into realizing the cost of drinking while driving and speeding. By today's standards the photo would be labeled editorializing, sensationalizing. However, other shots I studied of the time were often altered, touching up a photo to lower the skirt to the knees of an injured woman on the ground. We have become a shock culture. The Internet reported a story yesterday involving the suicide of a man who threw himself in front of a train, a group of teens shot pix with their cellphones posting the body and decapitated head. The man's son learned of his father's death via a news blog with the gory photos. Were those teens protected by the First Amendment? Is it alright to run a gory photograph on the news if the purpose is to educate? There is no easy answer to this question and common sense would seem to dictate, however, common sense seems to be in short supply.

The past week's weather here in Central Florida has been rough, Debby having dropped in for a stay that lasted way too long. This rose had every petal but one blown away. With only one petal, the rose retained a lovely image. I have attached one unaltered photo and a second in which I faded the color to a pale version of the intense coral. The faded coloring was an artistic statement of the state of the flower, just one petal away from gone, fading out into oblivion. Have a favorite?

Full color


Faded color

Natural process for the flower, they dry out on the stem.

Fragments of the structure of tiny blossoms on a basil plant, most of the petals gone, but the sturdier infrastructure remains.

Fragments

Actually, true, but the composition of number 3 creates the illusion of negative space, so I include it. Number two? About 1/2 way there.

I spent some time today reviewing the comments of people on my three photos. I am aware that, as the saying goes, everyone has an opinion, but in an effort to learn and improve, I spend quite a bit of time each day reviewing my photos, doing what PP I feel is necessary and looking at the work of other photographers as a learning tool. I routinely scan Ugly Hedgehog, Aperture Magazine's 72dpi website, National Geographic's site for sharing photos and Leica's online magazine. So, with that in mind, I took one of the photos and applied all of the suggestions. I removed the crack in the wall, saturated the photo more and flipped it. I post both so you can compare. I will also explain my thoughts on the original and why I did what little editing I did. I left the crack, as I felt it balanced the lower right hand corner to the swirl of the orange paint in the upper right. I really never thought of flipping the image and see nothing gained when I do. I did agree with the saturation, though I will say that there is a print of this photograph matted and framed. Green was my choice for matting and the tension created between the mat and photo worked to intensify the color without PP. I do read and think about each comment and appreciate every interaction. Thanks

First


Second edited

There was much discussion, much appreciated, about the three 'negative' space shots I posted. I read over all of the critiques and will look at whether I feel I need to edit my three photos accordingly. I posted a comment at the end of the prior post which went into why I find negative space compositions so interesting, a remnant of my painting training in art school.

Red Maple Leaves

I love shooting negative space photographs, I think remmants of design class in art school. I am considering entering these 3 and a couple more in a rather big deal juried show. Opinions?

The Green Umbrella


Smiling Face


Orange Line

Often the perfect rose is the one I tend to shoot, but today, the 'less than perfect' roses seemed to be the 'perfect' shot. Agree?

I wanted to truly understand the difference. I found this excellent article which explained macro/micro/close-up: http://www.slrphotographyguide.com/blog/macro/macro-micro-closeup-difference.html

I sort of set the tone, and bar, for myself each morning by wandering through the yard and finding a shot. It helps me get focused, to get in the mindset to watch for the things throughout the day that ask to be photographed. My goal is one great shot a day. Lots of days I delete all the shots, some days there is more than one that qualifies, but it is great each day to start out with eyes wide open.

Every Morning

Very nice.