[jaieger]

Hey all! For my high school photography course, one of my assignments was to go out and shoot plants; as always in the course, the top 5 would be the ones presented to the teacher. Now, my teacher gave some interesting critique/criticisms to my pictures, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't, so I was wondering what your guys' critique of my shots would be. It'd be interesting at least to see how they compare. Also, in the one of the leaves, that was shot at 1.7 on my M50, and I realize that there's a bit of handshake-slight OOF on the leaves that're sharp. I picked that among my 5 because I was taking advantage of the fact that my teacher doesn't bother viewing full size and just leaves it as a smallish window, so flaws like that aren't revealed











^the colours of these look a bit off/stale for some reason, not sure why. They look fine in the original files.

[bogdan255]

Hi jaieger!

your had a good idea to shoot flowers with water drops so for me the second picture take the winner prize from your set. I also think that the first picture would impress more if there were no wilted petals and a larger DOF.

for my taste the last 3 pictures are not so good because the focus area is small and it is hard to locate the subject. you should try using a larger aperture to have the entire plant in focus and/or use a different position to picture your subject.

[Ash]

First rule of macros for relatively new macro shooters: you should stop down much more than you think.

Water drops are good - they add a sense of life - but avoid the blemished flowers and frame your subjects in a way that exemplifies their beauty - #2 is probably the best in this regard.

Keep at it.

[jaieger]

Thank you for the CC! (:

I did have a few that I focus stacked till it was all in focus, but having the entire flower in focus just made it a bit boring to my eyes. I guess the trick is to find a balance between in focus and oof portions of the subject.