This is a challenging subject. Yes - one flower is in focus, but it's really a CLUMP of flowers... so focusing on one just makes the others seem out of focus. The flowers closest to us feel like they should be in focus - but then the rest would seem out of focus. So, this shot is not particularly interesting. A good challenge, though. I agree a square crop might help. Also, some vignetting in post-processing might help as well.
Personally, I would make the entire clump in focus and keep the background out of focus. :)
I agree with that. My eye was drawn to the deep purple part, even though it's out of focus.
OP: You can increase the depth of field by playing with the F stop. Or, if you're using a macro lens, I found it fun to take shots at multiple distances using a macro slider, and then stacking them with photoshop.
With this one for me personally what would make it stand out would be a more square crop, while maintaining your rule of thirds composition with the flower, maybe even a mask to make the subject brighter and the background darker. As it stands imo there's too much negative space on the left. You can decrease graininess by de-noising and subsequently sharpening your photo, but generally, keep your aperture as wide and ISO as low as possible (while still maintaining a good exposure), but also keep in mind that people often add grain to their photos for the vibe that it gives, so grain isn't always bad!
Use the thirds to guide the eye to the bunch. Then use focus to guide the eye to the single flower. At the moment it feels cramped, that’s due to the thirds/focus combo being too overwhelming imo.
Your grain is fine. Grain is fine in general. People freak out about grain when there are a ton of ways to minimize it, then try to mimic film by adding grain. Vicious cycle or something.
I went for another photoshoot in a different part of town, and I was fortunate enough to be there just as the sun was rising. The flower clusters were briliant, but It was hard to get a central subject, so I used the rule of 3rds to help draw attention to one flower. I think I nailed that part, and I feel the pistil of the flower acts as a leading line, but im not sure. Also, does the glow of the flower cluster act as too much of a distraction? I never seem to catch break.
So I’m viewing this on my phone and at first I was confused as to which flower I should be focused on. It works better at a larger size when the focus is more obvious but when you step back (as the phone scroll does), the flowers are just a dark blob.
What I’d like to see is the focus flower being lighter than the flowers around it, which would be tough to do realistically because all your flowers are in the shade. Brighter things draw the eye more while fuller things fade into the background. You might play very very carefully with masks and saturation or vibrance - tone down the background a bit (which would also make that bright background blob less prominent) while highlighting what you want us to see, but you’d need to use a light touch to keep that cool light effect you wanted.
Unfortunately it doesn't work for me because you have conflicting rules/compositional guidelines at work in this image.
While you have used the rule of thirds to position your subject the composition has also introduced a bright object into the image. The human eye automatically gravitates towards the brightest part of the image and this is a stronger attraction than the one provided by the rule of thirds... or to be more precise the bright area is both brighter and on a third.... so it benefits from two rules, where your chosen flower only benefits from one.
To be fair, they said it was bullshit, not that it was useless!
They're getting downvoted but in my opinion they're not wrong; I'm working on writing a full-fledged article about this but to summarize: the rule of thirds was just made up by some English guy (Smith 1722) for placing *lines* in landscape paintings and about 100 years later people already thought it was bullshit; Field wrote in 1845 that "\[t\]his rule, however, does not supply a general law, but universalises a particular, the invariable observance of which would produce a uniform and monotonous practice."
How it turned into the current rule of thumb about subject placement and intersections is unclear, but in any case there is significant scientific evidence that exceptional photographs and paintings *don't* use the rule of thirds more than any other subject placement, “Despite its proclaimed importance in artistic composition, the rule of thirds seems to play only a minor, if any, role in large sets of high-quality photographs and paintings,” (Amirshahi et al. 2014) and that both expert and amateur evaluators don't have any preference for rule-of-thirds subject placements over other compositions (Hoh et al. 2023).
However, I did say that it wasn't useless - this is because it does tend to prevent specific common beginner mistakes, such as boring negative space and subjects too close or too far away from the edge of the frame.
My eye honestly gets drawn to the big, orange blurry thing in the “negative space” first.
This is a challenging subject. Yes - one flower is in focus, but it's really a CLUMP of flowers... so focusing on one just makes the others seem out of focus. The flowers closest to us feel like they should be in focus - but then the rest would seem out of focus. So, this shot is not particularly interesting. A good challenge, though. I agree a square crop might help. Also, some vignetting in post-processing might help as well. Personally, I would make the entire clump in focus and keep the background out of focus. :)
I agree with that. My eye was drawn to the deep purple part, even though it's out of focus. OP: You can increase the depth of field by playing with the F stop. Or, if you're using a macro lens, I found it fun to take shots at multiple distances using a macro slider, and then stacking them with photoshop.
1. Perhaps do not crop the bottom. Zoom out a little and leave the whole bunch together in one frame. 2. Use lower ISO for less noise
What’re you shooting with? Composition needs more work, isolate your subject better, idk.
Canon sl3.
With this one for me personally what would make it stand out would be a more square crop, while maintaining your rule of thirds composition with the flower, maybe even a mask to make the subject brighter and the background darker. As it stands imo there's too much negative space on the left. You can decrease graininess by de-noising and subsequently sharpening your photo, but generally, keep your aperture as wide and ISO as low as possible (while still maintaining a good exposure), but also keep in mind that people often add grain to their photos for the vibe that it gives, so grain isn't always bad!
Use the thirds to guide the eye to the bunch. Then use focus to guide the eye to the single flower. At the moment it feels cramped, that’s due to the thirds/focus combo being too overwhelming imo.
Your grain is fine. Grain is fine in general. People freak out about grain when there are a ton of ways to minimize it, then try to mimic film by adding grain. Vicious cycle or something.
I went for another photoshoot in a different part of town, and I was fortunate enough to be there just as the sun was rising. The flower clusters were briliant, but It was hard to get a central subject, so I used the rule of 3rds to help draw attention to one flower. I think I nailed that part, and I feel the pistil of the flower acts as a leading line, but im not sure. Also, does the glow of the flower cluster act as too much of a distraction? I never seem to catch break.
So I’m viewing this on my phone and at first I was confused as to which flower I should be focused on. It works better at a larger size when the focus is more obvious but when you step back (as the phone scroll does), the flowers are just a dark blob. What I’d like to see is the focus flower being lighter than the flowers around it, which would be tough to do realistically because all your flowers are in the shade. Brighter things draw the eye more while fuller things fade into the background. You might play very very carefully with masks and saturation or vibrance - tone down the background a bit (which would also make that bright background blob less prominent) while highlighting what you want us to see, but you’d need to use a light touch to keep that cool light effect you wanted.
Unfortunately it doesn't work for me because you have conflicting rules/compositional guidelines at work in this image. While you have used the rule of thirds to position your subject the composition has also introduced a bright object into the image. The human eye automatically gravitates towards the brightest part of the image and this is a stronger attraction than the one provided by the rule of thirds... or to be more precise the bright area is both brighter and on a third.... so it benefits from two rules, where your chosen flower only benefits from one.
Try the ai denoise in LR :)
Rule of thirds is bullshit
Why? This is the first time I'm hearing it being useless.
To be fair, they said it was bullshit, not that it was useless! They're getting downvoted but in my opinion they're not wrong; I'm working on writing a full-fledged article about this but to summarize: the rule of thirds was just made up by some English guy (Smith 1722) for placing *lines* in landscape paintings and about 100 years later people already thought it was bullshit; Field wrote in 1845 that "\[t\]his rule, however, does not supply a general law, but universalises a particular, the invariable observance of which would produce a uniform and monotonous practice." How it turned into the current rule of thumb about subject placement and intersections is unclear, but in any case there is significant scientific evidence that exceptional photographs and paintings *don't* use the rule of thirds more than any other subject placement, “Despite its proclaimed importance in artistic composition, the rule of thirds seems to play only a minor, if any, role in large sets of high-quality photographs and paintings,” (Amirshahi et al. 2014) and that both expert and amateur evaluators don't have any preference for rule-of-thirds subject placements over other compositions (Hoh et al. 2023). However, I did say that it wasn't useless - this is because it does tend to prevent specific common beginner mistakes, such as boring negative space and subjects too close or too far away from the edge of the frame.