The first shot is a closeup of a lily taken in direct sunlight. Overexposed intentionally, with no photoshopping...straight off the camera.

I removed the second picture...it was a bit pointless...

Comments?

1st one looks good, second one doesn't really grab my intention. I think you said it wasn't supposed to and was a random shot.

The 1st is excellent though.

I edited out the yellow parts near the top. Haven't decided if it's an improvement or not...

It seems a bit soft and lacks a little detail at the top of the flower but I really like the artistic feel to it...
Greg

It seems a bit soft and lacks a little detail at the top of the flower but I really like the artistic feel to it...
Greg
Yep, that's what I was going for...

I used an extension tube with a 50mm lens at a pretty wide open aperture. I wanted people to know it was a flower, but I was mainly going for the color and curves of the flower.

Skyline,

When I first looked at this I though Yuck!. I then went for a coffee and came back into the study and from the doorway which is about 9 - 10ft from the monitor it looks good. However close up it does nothing for me at all.

Now print this big and hang in a gallery so that you could look at it from a distance and it would be really good.

As for getting rid of the yellow stamen from the top - I would be tempted to keep them but then it looks good without them too.

Roger

You might try a 200mm lens as well. You can get some pretty artsy results that way too...
Greg

You might try a 200mm lens as well. You can get some pretty artsy results that way too...
Greg
If I owned one, it'd be great! :P

Thanks for the comments, guys...or gals...whatever the case may be.

I would leave the yellow elements in and as suggested think of this in a large scale. This is a photo about color and little else so the more color you have with this type of abstraction the better. The yellow gives it some foundation. The black and yellow provide a complimentary weight to the image. It would need careful framing though to display well. Otherwise the eye just random moves around the slight yellow accents in the sea of red.

I really like this a lot. Normally close up of flowers or butter flies don’t do much for me. I mean they are neat, I just wouldn’t go framing them and putting them on my wall. What you have here is more like a painting done with a camera instead of a brush – very artsy. I like it much better with the yellow not cropped off the top and I like that is out of focus. It gives your eye another place to wander then just the center of the photo. That colors are really nice and the dark contrasty left side and bright right side really helps pull this together. I think if you had shot it in anything other then direct sunlight it would not be what it is now - a piece of art. Nice shot!