The eye catcher

Dedicated to Nancy

Normally I am not a fan of flower pictures but you did this right. I love the color and I like how you kept a potentially complicated image clean by just shooting the top half of the flower.

Yes, the colour of the sunflower made me think of the colours of sunset and so I took this flower like the sun in the moment it is "touching" the ground. :)

...thank you Stefano....I am honored and will always enjoy & appreciate your work...

:)

Nancy

Stefano, this is one of my all time favorites. It really shows how good you are with the photography. This is one of your true masterpieces.

Thank you very much Erik for your kind words. We photographers are all striving hard to take the great shot, most of the times in very complicated and unusual light conditions, to achieve that particular atmosphere. This sometimes makes us forget nature in all its simple beauty. I didn't do anything particular to capture this flower: I saw it, it was there, it was almost noon but the shades were perfect, it had just rained, nobody was around, I took my photo. I could have even taken it with the auto mode with not very different outcomes.

Very nice photo, Stefano.

 

Now, because I appreciate your work and wish to see you become even better, I have a constructive criticism.

 

My comment is that the picture needs a bit of blurring to reduce the light scatter and false fringing of the upper right center of the flower, at the base of the petals - overall, I find the photo too "sharp" for the subject. Perhaps a polarized filter would have also helped, if the light scatter is truly glare.

 

I believe ambient light was sufficient for a nice high shutter speed, which is good - all my flowers jump and dance before I can snap them, unless I mechanically stabilize them.

 

Nice saturation, very good color balance. I'm sorry I cannot rate this as high in originality as I would like, but aesthetics rate well. <5/7> Nice job!

 

Stephen ("Keelhauler")

Hi Stephen and thank you for taking the time to comment this shot.

 

I know my answer will probably disappoint you. It is possible that something went wrong (I didn't noticed it) while adjusting the file to post on PN. Infact I always digitally sharpen the file just in the moment I must use it on internet: the ones on my HD are never digitally sharpened so that I don't lose quality because of the filter. So... the false fringing is just a problem of this particular file I've uploaded. :) Thansk for pointing this out anyway.

 

About all the rest... it would have been great to take this photo with a macro lense and a tripod and a mechanic stabilizer, but as long as I don't have a macro lense nor the stabilizer I must use what I have. I took this photo in the distance, probably I could have used a quicker shutter speed, but IMHO I would have lost some of the tones.Thanks again ;)Stefano