[Shenloanne]

Was a lovely sunny day in Belfast yesterday so I took a trip to the local forest glen that's about 5 mins from home. It's where the Connswater river starts high in the Castlereagh Hills and follows a gorgeouly mossy Glen to the Knockbreda Dual Carriagway. A little bit of the wild in in suburbia. It's an absolutely beautiful place. The kind of green zone that wouldn't look out of place in My Neighbour Totoro.

I'm happiest with 2 and 3 but I'm least happy with 5. The full midday sun was probably not the best idea to shoot under in hindsight so I'm planning on going back when the canopy has filled in a bit later in the spring and I'll try and get there at the morning golden hour.

Any C&C would be lovely.

[MossyRocks]

Well since no one has wanted to tackle this I guess I will give it a go.

#1
Love the sharpness of the unopened flower. However it seems to get lost against the background because there are other flowers just like it with similar lighting behind it. To the left of the image there is a dark area. I would have rotated counter clockwise around the flower a bit to get it so that it has that dark background. The sharpness it has as well as the brightness would have really cause it to pop against dark.

#2
There is a picture here. I struggle taking pictures like this and would have ended up with one very much like this. Without being able to see the EXIF data I don't know how applicable some of my advise would be but here it goes. I would maybe have considered going wider to elongate the trail as it goes away from you. I then would have stopped the lens down a lot to get everything from the immediate foreground to the log sharp. Everything behind the log I would let go blurry. I would then consider doing a crop so that only a tiny bit of sky is showing, basically the ferns and greenery on the top left of the log would be the top of the image.

#3
While it is clear that the leaf is the subject my eyes keep getting pulled to the water fall. I almost wonder if it would have been possible to put the leaf so that it was in the falls Again I like where this was going.

#4
I think this images suffers from something I do all the time which is just being busy. I think there are just too many flowers but the flowers aren't creating an interesting pattern, shape, or texture.

#5
There is something here so I wouldn't discount it even considering it was basically a midday sun. I find the branches distracting in the lower left of the frame. The sun coming in from above is washing out a lot of details and if you don't have a hood for the lens you used for this image it would benefit from using one next time. For this shot I would have went and stood in the stream, and have done that a number of times for shots similar to this. Rubber boots are wonderful for such things. This is an image where shooting it as a 5 shot bracket and then blend in the properly exposed parts from each shot or do it as an HDR. Using a step of 1.3EV or 1.7EV would probably be enough. I would probably try both methods and see what comes out.

[Bruce Clark]

I agree with everything MossyRocks has mentioned. I will add one small additional comment on #3. This is my favourite of the set and worthy of some attention. A good crop may enhance this image and while there take out that small orange speck below the leaves. .