Cowslip (Primula veris)

Dear Valued Photographers,

I had come across of this delicate question for me when I was outdoors

yesterday and find the first cowslips on the sea meadow near the Baltic

Sea.

When you look closely to this one photo you will see that I have been

using the fully open aperture @ f/2.8 in order to get the background with

some bokeh - however - my question is will you dispite of the very thin

DOF still accept some flower petals out of focus (the flower is not flat! ;-))

in favour of more soft background bokeh? So how do you think yourself

when you are doing close-ups on flowers? Please give me some hints

and maybe an advice in this field and I would very much appreciate your

valued thought on this subject!

I tended to be very much "stopping-down-and-having-almost-everything-

sharp" before but now I am kind of RE-LEARNING to also use the open

aperture in order to achieve some nice bokeh that gives in my eyes a

nicer total look to the photo and also giving the main picture elements

the most attention!

I am looking forward to your wise advice! Thank a lots in advance!

With Early Spring Greetings from Sweden,

Charl Mellin

First of all let me note that I am an amateur photographer and these comments are just for thought.  The decision regarding DOF depends on the subject flower and the arrangement or shape of the blooms.  In the case where there are multiple or bunches of blooms it's a difficult decision, but I would pick out the bloom or blooms that you feel are the most dominate or interesting and focus on those.  Having too many blooms in focus will cause the eye to jump around and try to take it all in at once.  This image doesn't have a dominate bloom and probably could use more DOF, but that's just an opinion and I'd like to point out that this shot was interesting enough to have me open it for a larger view, so I'd say it's a really good shot (that might could use a little cropping on the right)... Mike

It's an interesting debate, blur or sharp or in what combination or proportion. The truth is that the permutations are almost infinite and to match that so are the opinions of various photographers. My best advice is to take a look at what pleases you the most, and try it for yourself. I experimented recently with a similar shallow dof using an aperture of f1.8 and selecting a small point of focus within a larger area of blur. The blur element of the image can be just as important as the point of focus. I like the diagonal composition and the natural looking colour of this image. The dof is ok too though I would personally have a smaller proportion of flower within the frame with a greater propotion of the said flower in focus, if that makes any sense.  However I must reiterate that I'm not saying my opinion is right, it's purely subjective. Check out the following flower photographers for further idea's far better expressed than I can say in words "Roger Sonneland"  "Dror Baldinger" and "Sarah McNulty" all of whom post some excellent blurry type images. Oh and not forgetting of course Jamie Kraft the PN "Baron of Blur"  

Best Regards

Alf