Just asking you commets about some of my work that I have been doing over the past year in Arizona..Comments or critiques?

-- Eric A. Rosen (electron@dancris.com), December 22, 1998

Answers

The "full sun behind you" lighting is very unflattering to floral subjects. It makes harsh shadows that seem to chop up the image into bright colors and black spots.

Althought the colors are nice, I see no sort of recognizable composition, the elements are just jumbled together. I much prefer to see some sort of graphic design in an image: lines, forms, textures, etc. that make a whole image.

Please scale your images to the dimensions called for in the guidelines so I don't have to scroll the image to see it all at once.

Please try again and good luck with your photography.

Frank

-- Frank Kolwicz (bb389@lafn.org), December 22, 1998.

I think that cropping out the bottom 1/5 of the image from the rock down would improve the overall composition. Generally, I agree with Frank about the direct sun being harmful to flower photographs but I am not so sure that is true with this one. I think I might have zoomed in on the four flowers that suround the upper portion of piece of wood.

-- Paul DiBiase (paulcanada@hotmail.com), December 23, 1998.

This hardly looks like a nature pic to me. What is that thing on the bottom ?

Maybe a close-up shot of several yellow flowers with that one white flower somewhere out of the middle and softer light, would have worked better.

-- jan van Bodegraven (janvnbdg@mandic.com.br), December 23, 1998.

To some of you who have been looking at my photo of the flowers. Just a few quick notes on this picture..

If you have eveer been to Arizona you can only shoot MexicanGold Poppies between teh hours of 10am-3pm when the flower is open, and as for the this image, it is a true nature shot cause that is exactly how everythign was arranged on the ground as I was walking around looking for small mini-landscapes as I call them.

thank you, Eric Rosen

-- Eric A. Rosen (electron@dancris.com), December 24, 1998.

Given the 10AM - 3PM window for photographing this subject, you should consider placing a large piece of translucent material between the subject & the sun. This will reduce the contrast in the photo which will help a great deal. This photo would also benefit from a clearer objective.

-- Chris Hawkins (peace@clover.net), December 24, 1998.

The white poppy is almost exactly in the middle and really detracts from the rest of the photograph. I also agree that the scene is to busy and therefore creates confusion. I also think you could have used a poloarizing filter or a warming filter to cut down on the hashness of the light.

Marty Schwartz

-- Martin Schwartz (d...schwartz@worldnet.att.net), December 27, 1998.