Bad subject or bad pic?

Everywhere I've posted this photo it has gotten no good response. Is it a bad shot or is it that it is spring and people want spring shots?

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Originally Posted by Bigcity

Everywhere I've posted this photo it has gotten no good response. Is it a bad shot or is it that it is spring and people want spring shots?

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I personally don't think it's a bad shot. Technically it looks ok to me. Perhaps you could enhance the colors and make it pop ? Don't know. Not the best looking flower? What are the responses you've got?

Look at the bright side: at least you've got responses :)

They are usually along the lines of " I liked the other flowers you've posted better'

It's a florist rose - long dead, the dye is keeping the color in it.

I think the subject has some great potential, but I think the composition is lacking. Maybe move back a little,and throw the BG out of focus more, or try a different angle or different lighting. Maybe take the background out all together and shoot it against something solid.

The subject has potential, you just need to find it. Good luck.

I would also concentrate on just one flower, isolate it and get rid of the half flower on the right hand side.
You'll need to re-shoot and move a bit, because if you crop it the flower's going to be too near the edge of the frame.

I think with the look of a dying rose it tends to give gloomy emotions. Maybe taking the brightness down and just giving the actual photo a darker look. To me it just seems like a dying rose in such a bright photo is confusing.

I believe that it's the background that kills this image. The in-focus sections are good enough. With close up and macro photography I'm a big believer that the background is just as important (and sometimes more so) than the actual subject. Your background here is noisy, colorful, and worst of all, contains highlights. I don't believe that any background for an image such as this should contain highlight areas. It really does detract from the foreground. Just my opinion.

i agree with that for sure. when i look at the photo i have a hard time seing the rose. my eye keeps being brought back to the bright spot to the top-right of the flower.

The rose has almost a 3D effect and the background, being blurred confuses the eye (well it does mine, but that could be my nature lol) I'm not sure where to look in the photo, maybe B&W? All though I know you wanted the dye color to come through.

you named it faded beauty. try to take the saturation down. i pulled it up really quick in photoshop and took the master saturation down by 45. it really knocked those bright spots way down so it's not drawing attention away from the rose. also, i think it matched the name a little better and made the overall look a little more gloomy to match the subject.
this is based on my personal taste, but maybe try it and see what ya think.

Not sure what happened to my reply last night - anyway I will try reshooting it with a few changes suggested. Thank you for looking at it.

I did retry this with a black background. The flower didn't come out as sharp as I would have liked. I think I'll move on to a different flower now:mad2:

yea, the black background makes the pic stronger comp wise, i wonder what it would look like with super bokeh...

i think the black bg pic would look better with a deeper DOF. The first image isn't bad, it's just pretty...normal. There's nothing that really grabs me. That may be why you don't get comments.