need some help on composition

[thebeginning]

...and the rest too, but mostly composition.

Everytime I look at this, it looks like it might need a crop. But then when i do try different crops, I always end up losing something I wanted in the picture. What do you guys think?

Here is the original:

and here is the crop that I ended up with:

I know, not much of a difference, I just wanted to know what you guys would suggest. The main reason i decided to crop it was because of the huge dark spot at the bottom left corner of the image. I found it really distracting, and I would have cropped it from the left but I wanted that leaf to be there still. Maybe I'm trying too hard (?). Please feel free to give comments and critiques aside from composition. all are appreciated!

 

[Nikon Fan]

I think the second works better, just because it gets rid of some of the excess negative space. In your first shot it almost seems that the negative space is more important than the flower, but in the second, more attention and emphasis is directed to it. So my vote would be for #2, and I like everything else about it Simple, colors are nice, and DOF is good

 

[thebeginning]

thanks for the tips amanda!

 

[kilifila66]

I think the second photo does more justice to the flower. The first photo shows not only the bloom of the flower but also the "bloom" of the foliage below it. This forces the eye to loose focus on the white bloom. The crop of the photo did a good job of removing this and placing the focus back on the flower. Other than that nice job, great detail and saturation of color.

 

[thebeginning]

i think that crop helped too, at least a little. thanks!