Flowers with water drops

Nice flowers! And the water drops add a nice touch! I think the background is somewhat distracting, especially the building or box or whatever it is, as well as the thin yellowish line extending from the left of the flower to the edge of the frame. Those two things really catch my eye and draw me away from the main subject. The flowers are nicely focused and the background nicely blurred, although I would probably try to blur it a little more. As far as composition is concerned, I would have left a little space between the flower and the right edge. Also, I wonder if you could have done something to include the close up leaves in a more purposeful way instead of being just cut off. As it is now, they are basically in focus, but yet not really a definite part of the picture. I’ve attached a photo where I tried to do the things I’ve just described. Although the leaves are not quite in focus for the most part, they are a definite part of the composition. The background actually had a lot of distracting detail, including a parking lot, brush and a wooded hillside in the distance (Ha! imagine THAT in West Virginia LOL), but I was able to get rid of it all with a wide aperture on a 200mm lens. I’m certainly not suggesting that this is the perfect flower picture, and you may not want to blur the background as much as what I’ve done here, but it illustrates what can be done with a long lens and wide aperture to eliminate distractions.

Great thoughts, @dan-cope! It’s amazing how much thought can go into a picture, yet I’m glad that over time it becomes more and more natural to notice and adjust.

I was wondering, @joseph, did you go to each of the flower clusters in the area to pick out the best bunch? to find the one that looked the most fresh? Whichever bunch of flowers I find that are the freshest looking are the ones I’ll usually photograph. And when I photograph flowers, I have found that focusing on the center-most portion of the flower will make the entire flower appear properly focused. To me, the flowers appear to be out of focus because the center isn’t in focus.

Also, if you have the opportunity (ie. there’s a stream or puddle of water nearby, or you happen to have access to a spray bottle), when there are a few to no water droplets on a flower, I like to add some of my own. 🙂