Posted by JL Morris on January 25, 2008
Posted under
Color,
Critiqued,
Flowers
When we photograph things that are under our control we take on the responsibility of making sure that everything about our subject is just the way we expect it to be in the final illustration. This is particularly true of still life or table top photography. We have the time, we have the ability to select our subject and we have the human eyes to see any imperfections that exist and correct them.
I like the orientation of the subject in this photograph. With the tip of the stigma just peeking over the rim of the corolla like a small golden sun rising. The lighting is nice and shows good contour and texture in the whites. The overall shape of the peddles is pleasing and fluid.
There are a few things I would like to call to the attention of the photographer. First there is what appears to be dust on in the white areas of the subject. Upon closer examination some look like dust on the flower and some appear to be small round circles that may be the result on dust on the lens or dust on the photo receptors in the camera. I would suggest that you do some tests with your camera to make sure your camera’s sensors are not dirty.
On the right side of the flower there appears to be a crease in the peddle, possibly caused by handling. If you see this in the future you may wish to select another subject, after all shouldn’t a lily be perfect?
There are two other things you may want to consider. I would be nice if we had a greater depth of focus. The focus point appears to be at the rear of the flower leaving the front tip soft. Look into hyper focal focusing. And last of all you want to watch getting the types of the subject tangent to the edge of the frame. You are ok here but very close and I think you would have a tough time printing and matting this photograph without making one of the tips touch the edge of the frame.
Click on Image 
Marked Up 
Modified 
Share This
January 25th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Jim:
Thanks, One of the areas IM weak in is “hyper focal focusing”, any thoughts as to where to go to learn more about the subject?
January 25th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Jim,
Good point on touching the edges. I used to run a frame shop and many photographer try and use every inch of the film without realizing if they want to frame the end result they need room at all the edges.
Ken,
One suggestion when shooting macro. Start at F22 or higher if possible. Make the main focal point 1/3 of the way back in the overall depth of the image.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Using a black background for flowers is risky but here I really like it.
January 27th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
This is really a case of DOF (depth of field) not HFD (hyperfocal distance), if you go to http://www.dofmaster.com you’ll fing everything you need to know about DOF and HDF. It’s an excellent website and you can download a free depth of field calculator and really get a feel for how focal length affects depth of field. You also have to consider ‘focus’ in macro or close-ups, especially if you are using single point autofocus vs. manual. There are calibration charts to test whether your camera is front or back focusing! You can do this in a quick and dirty test: take a small bottle with text on it, e.g. a prescription bottle, and single point autofocus on the text. Is the text on the apex of the curved bottle (the closest point to the camera) in critical sharp focus?
Hyperfocal distance has more to do with the minimum distance of sharp focus for a given focal lenght lens. For example: if you focus at twenty ft. with a 50mm lens @ f22 your HDF is 1/2 of that, i.e.10ft. If you changed to 30mm you would have to set your aperture to f8 to shoot at those same distances. This is based on a CoC = 0.019 (the circle of confusion for a Canon DSLR. HDF is typically used by landscape photographers to get a sharp image that includes the near, middle and far.