Sand lily (pancratium maritimum), in color

Also called "sea daffodil", this grows in a quite restricted area of the world. These two are from around Sinop, at the Black Sea coast, Turkey. Sand lilly seems to be encountered less and less frequently. Our children may never see any...

Thanks for looking at...

Thanks for sharing and your comment about it. It made for me it even more valuable shot.

lovely done friend. best regards.

Bulent,it is a beautiful flower, well placed on the frame. for my taste it needs some more contrast all together!

Joao & Pnina,

Thanks for commenting on this photo.Since I frequently hear comments on my photos not having enough contrast; I have done some reading and experimenting. The results will follow :)

Good to be here...

I think you could have hardly done this any better (sorry Pnina). What you've succeeded in is capture the delicacy and done that fantastically. I'm a big fan of contrast but changing anything here would be a big mistake. Your POV is great, that background really works to enhance your foreground. I wouldn't mind one bit hanging this one on my wall. In fact I think it's arguably the best flower shot I've seen in a long time. It's all there, great light, rich texture and all the technical requirements that are needed. You really can be very proud of this one.

I agree with the last comment...with more contrast the lightness of the image will be gone. It's beautiful. compliments -koushik

Thank you very much for your comments.

I can probably write quite many paragraphs on this topic now as I have devoted many hours to this subject (that is "contrast") lately. However, I think a shorter reply is better: There is a saying used in the education of physicians: "There are no diseases; there are patients only". This is to stress that the doctors should tailor their approaches (treatment included) to the patient's needs & not to the diagnoses... Same seems to be true for photographs; some images "need" more contrast some don't. To decide which is which is mostly an artistic decision. Surely, these decisions are also open to criticism... I guess only the better artists make consistently better decisions...

I was aware of the low contrast here and I did keep it low on purpose. This was partly because the original scene, which attracted my attention, was like that (hazy afternoon). My main concern was to show as much detail as possible in the bright areas. I believed those white leaves were showing the "fragility" of this beautiful plant. I have tried increasing the contrast (before uploading this version) and I thought it wasn't like how I saw the scene...

OK! I think I must stop now!

It is good to be here; many thanks again to all the contributors...