Kalmia angustifolia

There're a few things that don't quite work for me.

First, the scene as a whole feels underexposed and dark. The background can probably stay at the same tonality, but the flowers themselves certainly need to be brightened up a bit.

Next, the composition feels a bit random. The half-a-flower on the left is disturbing, thought it wouldn't be if there were several more partial flowers on the other sides of the frame, giving the impression of just a part of a large field. Either none cut off or many cut off would work, I think, but not just the single one. I also find the bud in the upper right distracting, as well.

You at once don't have enough depth of focus and too much. You've got seven flowers almost in focus, but none of them really has enough focus. Some of the petals are in focus but not all, or the tip of the central part that sticks out is but not the petals (or vice-versa), and the overall effect is a bit vertiginous. Stopping down enough to get all of all the flowers in focus would be critical for this composition, I think.

But, parts of the background are too much in focus. There's that bud in the upper right, for one, as well as a few other flowers in the center of the frame.

I think I might have looked for a cluster of flowers like that which didn't have anything close in the background so that I could really stop down the lens for depth of field without having to worry about distracting elements in the background. I might even consider having an assistant (if available) hold a card (black / white / color of choice) behind the flowers to do the trick.

Cheers,

b&