CC on a dandilion.

[Hooker771]

Here is a dandilion, the original is first and then my edit in lightroom. What do you think? Too much contrast or does it make it pop more?

I was trying to get a pic of my son blowing the "things" off of it but never got a good enough shot prior to picking all of them out of the grass

 

[Jacki]

I'm not an expert, but the picture is kind of blurry, so when you edited it, it looks even more blurry. This shot would look really good in macro, in my opinion.

 

[TJ K]

Not meant to be harsh but the first one seems a bit soft and is centered. I would recommend off setting it a bit to make it a really nice shot. The bokeh is good. The second one in my opinion is just a bit too over-processed. I know it's easy to go out of control so just try to move that slider a little bit less. GL
tj

 

[creisinger]

It appears you're struggling with extremely shallow depth of field.

In order to make that work in your favor I'd rip out all the seeds except one which is located and sticking into the same direction as the focal plane of the camera.

Easy put: All seeds out except of one on the top pointing to the right or left but not pointing to the front or back.

Then you could reach a half way focused image still having a strong concept.

If you don't want to harm the dandelion then I'd make sure that no wind can reach it and make multiple shots with different focus points. Later in post you can use various software programs also CS4 in order to make it all appear in focus.

That would be a tough project but it can be done.

 

[Hooker771]

Thank you for the tips. I have a ton of trouble with shallow DOF. Luckily my yard will have a ton of these with all the seeds we blew. Ill have plenty to practice with soon enough.

Here is my last edit. Do you think the center of the flower is OOF? I see that a lot of the seeds are but the middle looks fine to me. I agree with the macro shot. Im saving now to get the 100mm prime for just the occasion.

I have just blown this up on Flicker to original size and see the fuzziness in all the whites much clearer. I think its b/c it was a bit windy. This was shot with my kit lens on the Canon XS