Intimate Orchid
by flip89

Comment:
This is the sort of picture that I think really benefits for a symmetrical composition, so I find your choice of an asymmetrical composition quite interesting. I would also have preferred to see the entire bud in the depth of field and in good focus. Your picture is also a little bit too noisy.

You have got very nice and close to the flower however, and I am aware of how difficult it is to attain good focus and depth of field from such a vantage point.

Your picture would also benefit from being rotated clockwise a few degrees to level off the bottom of the petals and the top of the bud.

You have however attained a very lovely silky smooth white background with the petals, and that really does add to the shot.

Good luck.

River of Light
by LindaLee

Comment:
An interesting idea -- I assume that your main focus was on the colourful reflections of light? If this is the case then I am finding it a little bit difficult to pick out an exact point of focus, if I'm wrong then I guess and missed the point of the picture.

Good black background, I'm assuming you either have an expensive camera or that you edited it later on.

Good luck.

Through the Looking Glass
by agwright

Comment:
A clever shot and a good idea, well executed. Looking very British (that is if the next on the watch is the manufacturer) it is a shame that the picture is slightly noisy.

Steel Waves
by ScottK

Comment:
An interesting shot with a lot of potential and done in quite a good way. I'm impressed that you successfully managed to limit the amount of chromatic aberrations that you got.

If you could achieve it then I think that you should have attempted to get depth of field of just one knife and throw all the others out of focus. If this was impossible with your camera then maybe you should have tried to get a depth of field so that all of the knives were in focus.

I am okay with the composition that you have, but I do think that you have too much negative space at the top of your picture for a properly balanced image. Also as macro is a fantastic way of isolating just a tiny part of a larger object I was wondering whether or not you had tried a very tight crop of just the blades of the knives? I just held up a couple of pieces of paper to my screen and used one hand to get a very tight crop -- I feel that it makes the picture more interesting and makes it harder to tell what you're looking at. If you have not tried this then I really do suggest that you try it. If I did not explain that very well, then sent me the picture and I will send you back a copy of what I mean.

Good picture with a lot of potential, and well edited. Good luck.

Nerves of Steel
by Emeraulde

Comment:
With the chromatic aberrations that you got you may have benefited from stopping down your aperture a little bit, or using a slightly more telephoto setting. It might also help to underexpose the image and then brighten it up later on in an image editing program. Looks a little noisy. Good luck.

Porous Material
by channeled

Comment:
I am not sure what this picture is trying to convey or what the exact focus point is supposed to be on. Sorry if I missed the point.
Looks a little noisy. Good luck.

Bonne Maman Framboises (1.6 ounce jars)
by Azrifel

Comment:
Good effort arranging the jars, good depth of field and nice focus. Good luck.

Prickly
by jkiolbasa

Comment:
A good fill the frame shot, the needles of the cactus contrast very well with the green of the cactus. I would however say that your picture lacks a single point to focus -- maybe a shot more along the edge of the cactus with a shallow depth of field would work better in this case?

Also a lot of your highlights are quite blown out, and suffer from chromatic aberrations. Sticking with the picture that you have got, I think the picture may well have worked better if you crop tightly to the main bud on the left of the cactus. You would have removed the distracting colour from the lower right and also a lot of the blown out detail on the left. I also feel that you could have underexposed this picture by about to stop and corrected the brightness later on in Photoshop, this would deal with the blown out detail and some of the chromatic aberrations.

My main concern is the point to focus however. I do however like the lighting and the way that it brings out the different shades of green in the cactus itself. Good luck.

Pencil
by tomlewis1980

Comment:
Good use of composition and lighting, nice effect. Interesting patchy background. I'm guessing that you used a Canon 10D with a 50 millimetre F 1.8 lens and extension tubes.

Sunny
by Gracious

Comment:
I really like the fill the frame effect in this picture, I also like the composition and the balance. I like the way that the lower petals point you to the lovely warm colour in the lefthand side of this picture. What I feel lets this picture down is that it is somewhat noisy, and that the very bottom righthand corner adds nothing to the picture and is just a distraction.
Nice composition. Well done.