Showy Lady Slipper

[Austin Vinar]

How could I improve on this image?
Camera settings:
-ISO 200
-1/100
-f/10
-WB cloudy
-tripod

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[Ezra Morley]

I know my laptop screen isn’t a very good judge, but to me that photo looks a little bit “dull”. I popped it into GIMP, and edited the levels a bit to give it a little bit of “pop”.

Go to Colors > Levels in GIMP

See the attached screenshot for the settings I used. You want to move the white and black points just enough that you don’t “clip” either end. (Don’t move the little arrow beyond where the histogram starts and ends…)

I also sharpened the photo some with the wavelet-decompose tool.

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[Austin Vinar]

What about composition? I want room at the top and the bottom of it.
Is the depth of field right?

[Austin Vinar]

I can go reshoot. Is there anything I should do differently?

[Ezra Morley]

Well, I would say if anything, you might want to put the subject slightly off-center to the right. You’ve got the second bud coming out to the left which should help balance it out a little.

To tell the truth, I’m not very good at composition, hopefully @JamesStaddon or one of the more professional photographers can chime in with some tips.

I would also expose to make the image slightly brighter so that you don’t have to brighten it too much in post-processing. Here’s a thread on reading your camera histogram that might be helpful: https://www.lenspiration.com/forums/topic/lcd-brightness-and-the-correct-exposure/

As for DOF, I might try to focus just a little bit closer to make the blossom a little sharper instead of the leaves.

[Austin Vinar]

I actually think I might have turned down the exposure slightly after the fact.

[James Staddon]

You definitely want to pull the flower off the background as much as you can. You’ve done this partially with DOF, but you would get more blur in the background with a wider aperture (f/5.6?). (You don’t want to make the DOF too shallow though, because you do want the majority of the flower to be in focus.) It looks like you are back-focused though; the leaves behind the flowers are tack sharp but the front peddles of the main front flower are not. They are out of focus. I would focus on the yellow part of the flower there on the main flower.

Compositionally, I would point the camera down a bit, cropping off the top and adding more to the bottom, also knocking the flowers off dead-center. I may also see what it would be like shifting my position to the right a little bit setting the subject completely against a darker background. The key is setting the subject off the background.

Good subject and color and contrast all around, Austin.

[Austin Vinar]

Here’s a reshoot I did last night. I may go back once more and take some of James Staddon’s tips.I still need the aperature at f/10 to get the whole flower in focus, but I may try an artificial backgrond. Yes, I did miss the focus in that one but this one is better. I zoomed in 10x on the rear LCD screen and manually focused on the little dark speck on the front of the bloom. I took Ezra Morley’s tip and shifted the bloom to the right. This one was taken in the late evening light and I like it better although there is one shadow across it from one of the petals. Thanks for the corrections! Keep them coming!

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[Austin Vinar]

Is this any better?
I like the overall composition better, and I would appreciate to know what you think.

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[Ezra Morley]

I like that a lot better! It’s definitely a more pleasing composition, and it’s nice that both buds are open! I also like the softer light, you don’t want bright light and shadows for flower pictures.

I think this one needs some brightening as well, here’s a quick touch-up I did in GIMP. (Just a quick levels adjustment as I already mentioned a few posts up.)

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[Austin Vinar]

Yes, did you bump the contrast or saturation? Not that it looks bad or unrealistic, but the colors just look more intense. Also, the noise in the background was magnified.

[Ezra Morley]

No contrast or saturation, just the levels adjustment. The noise is from sharpening. I was lazy and applied the sharpening to the whole picture, which increased the noise.

[James Staddon]

Good work here. (I’ll refer to the pictures you’ve uploaded so far, Showy-Lady-Slipper-Copy.jpg as #1, IMG_0072.jpg as #2, and IMG_0142-Copy as #3, for the sake of simplicity.) Everything here is simply my opinion, just writing out my thoughts.

I prefer the soft even light of #1 more than the direct light of #2. However, I think #3 is best in terms of light because there’s nice contrast without the business of the shadow introduced to the blooms themselves. #3 still has the appearance of a flower in a sunny, forest glade, which I like.

The background in #2 and #3 are better too. Dark in contrast to the light, foreground plant. I like the natural background.

Compositionally, #2 looks quite random, the flowers just dead center with no apparent thought of the rest of the elements in the frame. #3 looks more thought out. The perspective on the flowers is much better because now the flowers look like twins; both flowers look like flowers. The second flower fits in and adds to the composition.

Notice in all three images the amount of space that exists above the top of the plant. It would be better to compose the picture with less space at the top and more space at the bottom. Especially in #2.

Also notice the histogram. I think #3 would be well processed with the Whites slider in LR pulled to the right. Not sure how that would translate to the program you’re using.

[Austin Vinar]

Thanks a lot for the tips! Personally, I’m really glad I went out to shoot that third time. As in yesterday I added a flash and a mirror to my equipment, so I may go shoot some wildflowers today. I suppose using a mirror is an old trick. but it will be nice in the sense that you can fill in the shadows and still have the nice sunlit look. and if all else fails in comes the Yongnou YN 560 III.

[James Staddon]

That’ll be great!

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