Thoughts on a "landscape" shot and flowers

[xnoirox]

Two different takes, one of my local park and a grouping of flowers.
Thoughts?
This one is slightly edited.

DSC_0016 by noiro_103, on Flickr

This was not edited, but rather shot with the "Silhouette" effect mode on my Nikon.

_DSC0055 by noiro_103, on Flickr
I've got some other shots of these same flowers, but none are uploaded. If you would like to see them just ask.

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[charlie76]

Well...lens glare on the first shot is what I notice first.

[timor]

First one is not much of a "landscape" and the flare is not helping. Maybe lens is flare prone or maybe front element not too clean.
Second, please forgive me, is too much of a lollipop. With this subject I prefer your b&w production. Both pictures simply lack sort of "drama" to be interesting.

[Tuffythepug]

well the first shot has too many obvious flaws in it. lens flares, strange highlight in front of the house and some odd light patch at the base of the tree on the right. I'm sure you must have noticed these when you posted the picture. I'm not sure what you expect in the way of comments on that one

The second one is technically ok but not very interesting in my view. It's not a bad picture; just not much there to capture attention.

[AlexHawk]

I feel both photos have room for improvement. The flare on the landscape photo, although not easily cloned out, can be fixed by simply changing your angle to the sun. I see on flickr in your EXIF data that it was shot at f/11 which is good. If you want, you can get even more of a star shape out of the sunburst in those trees by picking a higher f-number like f/16 or f/22.

The flowers look good but photos of such standard arrangements are kind of cliche in my opinion. I would tend to crop in tighter for something like this or simply find a different angle or subject all together. Overall, I like this shot and I think you're headed in the right direction!

[greybeard]

#1 lacks a point of interest or subject, my eye just sort of wonders over it and ends up resting on the lens flare. #2 is too dark and contrasty for my taste.