Chandlergr, I like the colors in this photo. One of the first things I noticed about the picture, unfortunately, was the presence of the dust spots. I don’t know if they are a result of scanning or dirty photo equipment but for me they detract a lot from the photo.

If this were my photo I would probably do a lot of cropping on it to make the flower more of a dominant part of the picture. I might also try a slightly different angle to get rid of that alternate stem on the bottom right of the frame.

I like the lighting in this picture. If it wasn’t natural lighting you could have fooled me. I find that I generally dislike flower photos where a flash was the primary light source because the lighting tends to be too harsh and makes the flowers look unnatural. Your photo looks very natural and I like that a lot.

Coachgns, these are some nice photos that you have posted. They probably deserve to be posted in their own thread so they can get more attention. On the first one I like the composition and color but the lighting seems a bit harsh to me. I don’t particularly like the hard shadows on the petals and am not too thrilled with the black background. I also think that the petals would look a lot more natural with softer light. This photo might be helped by bouncing your flash off a reflector.

On the second one I also like the color and composition though I might crop a tad off the right side of the photo since it doesn’t seem to be adding much to the photo. Again the harsh shadows takes away from this photo for me but I think the black background works well here. Maybe indirect lighting and/or a diffuser would help with the shadows.

Greg