C&C on a flower shot

[Overread]

I'd have preferred that the whole flower be in focus, instead of just the petals on front...

That can actually be harder than it first sounds. When working close to a subject the depth of field you get at each aperture decreases and working as close to a flower as in this shot would (I expect) mean that getting the depth of field to cover the whole flower would either be impossible or impractical. That latter part being that (on most setups) once you start stopping down beyond f13 diffraction will start to take place and that will mean that your images will be softer. f16 is the absolute limit that I work with and I mostly stick to f13.

In the flower shot presented here the focus is really where (I at least ) feel it needs to be - on the foreground petals which dominate the photo in its presentation.

You can use atelephoto lens and thus shoot from further away, which will give you a little more (not very much at all) depth of field; or you can use a method called focus stacking to stitch together a series of images to give a final resulting composite image which has a greater depth of field than normally possible.

 

[iBats]

no because i am so close

 

[Overread]

With closeup (which is what the flower shot is) and true macro work the depths of field become very small indeed. That is why the skill comes in choosing the correct part of the image to focus on and getting the angle at which your focusing at as good as you can - thus to maximise the use of the limited depth of field that one has to work with. The focus stacking methods can be used, but you need a stable and static subject and camera - which is not always possible if wind or insects are put into the equation.