crazy bokeh

I'm not sure if the background is interesting or too restless. Quite an

experimental shot with a 85mm + 2x teleconverter. This lens setup

can create quite smooth backgrounds, but @f3.5 (x2) it's somewhere

between disturbing or interesting. Thought to share it anyway.

My personal opinion is that it comes very, very close to working. I like the background a lot—the colors, shapes, textures, and tones are beautiful. And I like the foreground a lot—the sharply defined, angular, high-contrast seed-head stands out very well against the background. And I like the contrast between the background and foreground—the saturated color and right-leaning lines in the background set off the stark and left-leaning foreground seed-head very nicely.  You’ve put the foreground seed-head in the perfect location against the background in terms of what’s going on in the background—that’s exactly the location where it can stand out the most clearly. When I track where my eye travels when I look at the image, though, I find that it focuses first on the bright center-top background seed-head and tends to stay up there; I think this allows the background to over-power the beautiful foreground figure. It might be very interesting to try a crop — maybe from just above the base of the light center-top background seed-head (the one that attracts my gaze), and just to the left of the center-bottom background seed-head. This would help bring the viewer’s eye first to the foreground seed-head, and the gaze would go next to the background seed-head just to the left (which would have the added advantage of playing up the beautiful relation between the two lower seed-heads: leaning opposite ways, one in focus and one not). My eye would then travel up the stem to the light base of the top seed-head before coming back around once again to the foreground seed-head. Such a crop would also keep the full range of background tones and colors, which I think is important (I especially like that deep, dark green above the foreground seed-head). And my overall impression: there’s so much to like in this image!