Alliums for C&C

[brettmc]

So the other evening I decided to take a few pics of my wife's flowers, C&C please
1.

2.

3. I tried a little desaturation on this one, what do you think? Does it just make the flower look like its dying?

4.

Thanks for all of the help!

 

[linpelk]

Beautiful flowers, but I think they could use a little work. #'s 1 & 2: it would have been nice to have seen some detail in the sky. It is too blown out and it leaves a lot of bright white space (also could be my laptop monitor, which sucks). #1, I don't mind the blurred out edges if there was a strong, crisp focal point somewhere. I just don't see it (again, could be the monitor). #2, I think this one is much better. The color is much more vivid, but I think it might have been nicer if it was completely isolated (against a beautiful blue sky??).

I am usually a big fan of desaturation, but not so much with flowers. It makes them look dull and drab...on the verge of death

#4, the focus is just too soft and the background is too cluttered in my opinion (I'm so sorry, I don't mean to be harsh). It draws my attention away from the subject.

Ok, I hope that was helpful.

 

[Dagwood56]

All of these are out of focus. With a round flower like this I usually try to focus on a center point and let the outer edges go soft. That said :

1 & 2 also have a blown out sky

3 & 4 have the best background with the compsition being the best in #3 and the color being the best in the 4th.

 

[Steph]

1,3 and 4 are clearly out of focus. NTo me number 2 is in focus but with a shallow depth of field. I like the completely white background (is that really a featureless sky? To me it looks like those pictures were shoot indoors) in number 2. What I don't like is the 2 flowers in the background. I thing one flower in focus with a bit more depth of field on a white background would work quite well.

 

[brettmc]

Well with the first one, the sky was blown out and looked bad so I just took it to the extreme and turned it white, also I had the aperture wide open so that's why the EXTREMELY shallow DOF, so shallow in fact it lost focus, ha ha. I just thought it was kinda neat all blurred.
Pretty much the same story with #2 but I was having trouble again getting the focus right, kind of tough with all of those tiny little flowers.
The 3rd one I was back and forth with the desat.
The 4th one I was not excited about just wanted to get some opinions.

Thank you all for all of the help