Flowers

[AgingEyes]

C&C please !!




Your opinions will be greatly appreciated!!

Thank you!!

[CanonFan]

This is a nice photograph but I think the flower in the foreground is a little washed out. There is some nice detail that you can't quite see.

[Lori11]

Its so beautiful! I love the leaf in there.

[PhoebeG]

Nice Primrose! I like this style of floral. Nice lighting with enough contrast to give it some depth, and the main flower provides a nice sharp focal point.

I'm not sure about the leaf????? I think it would be good if the entire boquet were surronded by a "rosette" of leaves, but just the one at the bottom rises more questions than solutions.

Nice work, thanks for sharing.

Phil G.

[Frog]

Beautiful.
Since its just barely washed out, I'd think you could recover some detail with slight exposure adjustments in post editing. Hopefully you shot in raw.

[AgingEyes]

Frog, Phil, Lori and CanonFan, thanks for the comments!

As far as the white flowers look washed out, I checked the RGB readings in Photoshop and found that except a small area in one of the petals, the rest of the white petals show readings between 240 and 248. Granted our monitor settings could be different, I trust if you check the RGB readings with your favourite software, you should get the same readings. Still, the kind of washed-out look is also the result of me pushing as far as I can trying to get some glow in the white flower. Frog, I didn't shoot it in raw. I shot this photo with a Fuji F40fd digicam. No worry though because the original has all the details that I can use. I'm guess it's that washed-out look that causes the loss of some details

Anyhow, here's another version of the same photo. As you can see, this one shows better other flowers surrounding the white primrose. Personally, I find that the leaf at the bottom underneath the primrose kind of troublesome. Because of that leave, I think it is better to show other flowers and other things, too, so that they form some kind of frame around the primrose. However, other viewers find the inclusion of them distracting. What do you think?

[Greg McCary]

I think the lighting is so unbalanced getting a real good exposure is difficult. The flowers in the back are under exposed while the one in the front are over exposed. I do like the framing and composition but the front flowers are just to bright, could be my monitor. Maybe some input from others.

[AgingEyes]

I think the lighting is so unbalanced getting a real good exposure is difficult. The flowers in the back are under exposed while the one in the front are over exposed.

The darker surrounding was darker and also is intentional during pp so as not to make it a distraction. Still, some find it so

I do like the framing and composition but the front flowers are just to bright, could be my monitor.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think it has to do with our monitors. It's like most of Aaron posts I found them dark, but he said they were not as it looked good on his monitor. But we never quoted any RGB or LAB readings. Just like your two flower shots lately, I and others found them a bit dark, too. I assume they look fine on your monitor though.

Anyhow, I read that the RGB input readings are independent of monitor's settings. For the color white, usually white with good details fall into Zone VII or Zone VIII, which is about 240 in RGB readings. Right now I pushed some to 248. 255 is paper base white with no details and is also the blown highlights, which only a small area of one of the petals has.

When we calibrate our monitors, we use our eyes to set the brightness and contrast. How much we adjust to get the final settings then depends on our eyes, and mine are different than yours. So, I'm thinking perhaps our monitors are not really that reliable in judging the brightness level of a photo shown on the web. I'm still trying to find out more about it though.

Thanks for the comment!