AlanLichty
Moderator
That looks like a branch of flowers that would be dancing all over the place with any kind of breeze. Nice to catch them without motion.
The White blooms just jump out at you against the background. Good subject isolation.
Thanks Andrey,
You should have seen the shot where I had full DOF, then the stuff on the ground was really busy!
With the limited DOF I am happy with how it has softened the ground to let the Dogwood Blossoms separate themselves.
Thanks so much Alan! yeah, even the slightest breeze was moving the branches. So I had to be careful and time it just right. There wasn't a heavy breeze that day fortunately, but those branches start to move if you even look at them wrong.
Mike Mancil
Well-Known Member
I like the fragile blooms against the rugged forest beyond.
Bart Carrig
Well-Known Member
DOF is always a judgment call. For the "pure art" images, if I"m lucky to have a perfect subject that can carry the scene all by itself, I'll go for very shallow DOF, but from my perspective, this fits the context well, as Mike noted. So I'm for "as is".
Bart
Bart
Thanks Bart, I am glad you like this. I shoot 99.99999999% of my photos with maximum DOF.
It's rare when I shoot limited DOF, but I felt this filled the bill for doing so.
Jim Dockery
Well-Known Member
Nice shot, I look for these all the time. Like you Jim I normally like max DOF and do a lot of focus stacking to achieve it. This type of shot is very tricky though - I agree with lionking that this one would benefit with a smoother background, but a larger aperture might have put the background branch out of focus. If you were into it enough one answer would be to shoot two shots, then blend to taste, but the careful masking required with this one would be a bit of work in post. If you did that though you could also blur the background more and only sharpen the top layer (branches & flowers).