[top-quark]

Hmm, second attempt. Pressed the <ENTER> key first time while trying to attach a picture which submitted the post. Hopefully, it'll be moderated into oblivion because otherwise I'll look a fool.

Anyway, I found these little beauties in my very unkempt garden on a very grey autumn day. Seeing as it's one of my first attempts that I'm properly pleased with, I'd be interested to hear others' criticisms. And if anyone can identify the flower, I'd be interested to know what it is.

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[baro-nite]

I can't help with the flower ID, but I'll have a go at a critique.

From your camera settings and your description it must have been pretty dim light. So hand held you can only stop down so far; as is you already have the ISO pretty far up. Shallow depth of field is certainly appropriate for this kind of subject, but I think here it is a bit too shallow, for this particular perspective. The issue as I see it is that with massed groups of small flowers, the ones in sharpest focus don't "pop" out enough from the remaining, increasing out-of-focus, flowers. At least that's true here, where you are using a longer focal length but still a fairly wide field of view.

To maintain this perspective and field of view, I'd suggest using a tripod so that you can stop down to f/8 or f/11, getting most of the flowers in focus. Alternatively, you could try a shorter focal length and get much closer to the flowers for a tighter field of view; then I think the shallow DOF would work better.

Nice composition in terms of the perspective on the flowers and the quality of the background. To me this perspective calls for portrait orientation, giving the subject a little more space top and bottom but getting rid of some of the background on the sides. Very attractive colors and good job with the exposure.