A test with a Dandelion Clock

[focusonguitar]

I went out today with my little compact Samsung s1065 as the sun was shining and to see if I could find something colourful. Alas no, mostly greens greys browns and blacks were all I found apart from the sky.
So I took a close up of a dandelion head.
I did what I usual do with these kind of photos, cropped it and enhanced it a bit with some filters in photoshop.
Is the an ok way to do things? do you think the photo is better left untouched by photoshop? except for the cropping?
Thanks for your opinion.


seeds-orig by focusonguitar, on Flickr


seeds-messed by focusonguitar, on Flickr

 

[ceejtank]

Nice shots. I like them.

 

[focusonguitar]

Thankyou for that.

 

[patrickdio]

I personally like the first one more. I really like the white and the colours and the clarity. Background is a little distracting though.

 

[bennielou]

I LOVELOVELOVE the second shot. It's magical. While the first one is well shot, it's boring compaired to the second, IMO.

 

[focusonguitar]

Thanks for your comments, I am still figuring out how to blur the backgrounds more 'in camera' as it looks false a lot of the time if I do it in Photoshop.

I think I might be a bit limited on doing that by the camera I am using though. I'll keep practising.

The filter I used on the 2nd one was a freebie but has some good effects.

 

[grantjames]

I really like both! The first one makes me want to sneeze (damn hayfever!) but the second one looks like cotton wool so makes me want to jump in to the picture and get comfy, lol!

 

[JAC526]

Thanks for your comments, I am still figuring out how to blur the backgrounds more 'in camera' as it looks false a lot of the time if I do it in Photoshop.

I think I might be a bit limited on doing that by the camera I am using though. I'll keep practising.

The filter I used on the 2nd one was a freebie but has some good effects.

Use a wide open aperture like f/1.8 to create a very shallow depth of field. That way only what you focus on will be in focus anything in front or behind will be OOF.

 

[Desi]

really like the second shot.

 

[focusonguitar]

Thankyou. Both my cameras have a lowest fstop of 2.8 and 2.7. Is there any other way of getting a blurred background?
I took a real nice photo of my grandson today but that was ruined by the background too. It blurred very slightly and again I tried to fix it in Photoshop but it looked odd. I need to do more studying and practise.