- This topic has 4 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 5 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hello! I was recently in Wisconsin filming a friend’s wedding and was able to spend some time shooting photos along the shoreline of Lake Geneva as well. I was walking back down a path when I saw this flower facing away from me and thought to move a few feet off the path to get a better angle. At first I thought the fence and trail would add more depth to the background but now that I look at the image I think the fence could be distracting. How could I capture a shot like this better next time? Personally, I think I should have been shooting from a lower angle to be looking over at the flower instead of down at it but I don’t have enough experience in photography to know which angle would have been best.
Here’s the original JPEG image and a cropped version with an added vignette. Shot using a Canon 5D MKIII with a Tamron 24-70 mm lens. 1/125 sec,f/5.0, ISO 100I like the one with vignette as it helps with the fence. One thing I notice is the photo is kinda dark…maybe if you used a white vignette that might help?
Personally I like photos of flowers to be closer to the flower as it accentuates the beauty of the flower itself, but that is just my preference.
Welcome to the forums, @theodore! You’ve choosen a great subject! Looks like a neat place. 🙂
How could I capture a shot like this better next time?
Well, I think there’s one thing (among others!) that we have to ask ourselves before we take an image and it’s ‘What is my subject?’ I think you’ve established that in this image. Obviously, it’s those gorgeous flowers. But, then we have to ask ‘What are we including in our image that doesn’t add to or draws us away from our subject?” When I look at your image, I see a lot of really nice things – a path, fence, leaves, water droplets, etc. But while they’re all nice, each of those things could be subjects on there own and really just draw your eye away from the subject instead of add to it. For instance that fence and bridge – really cool leading line – but instead of being drawn to the flowers, my eye is being taken right out of the image and away from the flowers. I think what you need to do to make this shot look pleasing to the eye is simplify. Cut everything else that is a distraction out (as best as you can – easier said than done, I know! 😉 ) If I was there taking this picture, I would of zoomed up on one of the flowers and tried including some blurred out leaves around the edges for a frame.
I hope these thoughts might be somewhat helpful! Don’t get me wrong – it’s a nice photo! I definelty like your edit better than the original, but I think it would be nice to brighten it up a bit, too.
Thanks for the critique! Because I was shooting from the opposite side of the flower bed using only 70mm focal length on an open frame sensor I couldn’t get the shot as tight as I usually would. My first choice would have been my 70D with an 18-135mm lens which is what I usually use as an all around camera setup but that camera was still packed away in one of my backpacks so I grabbed the 5D instead. In hindsight, I should’ve gotten a better camera for the shot and gotten the image a lot tighter so I wouldn’t lose any data in cropping away most of the photo to remove the distracting ‘lead-out’ lines.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.