bumble bee on flower

[tim]

Took this last night, played a little with it in photoshop. Comments or critique welcome.

[dewmuw]

I like the effect a lot - lovely colours highlighted by the treatment to the background. The light is maybe a tad harsh.


What did you do to get this effect?

[tim]

I selected the flower in PS, created a new layer with the selection (Control J), then did a radial blur set to zoom. Takes about 2 minutes when you have a book that tells you how! ;)

[KevC]

I like the flower, but I find the blur to be... too strong. Almost distracting. Almost like the flower is going into warp speed. Lol! But it's a nice shot, maybe post the original or without so much radial blur.

[tim]

I did it like that to make it more interesting for my website :)

Here's the original.

[sparker1]

Pretty shot of the flower, but I think a tighter crop would help. I've tried the zoom blur, but usually prefer the Gaussian or standard blur, along with some darkening.

[PhotosGuy]

I agree with Stan. More crop, less blur. Have Scotty beam up the new shot to us! ;)

[tim]

Here's how I had it originally!

[PhotosGuy]

I like that better, but don't let us keep you from trying new things!

[tim]

I was going for a "hey that's cool" type look for non-photographers. People seem to be getting bored at looking at all my flowers!

[sparker1]

I really like the last version much better. You could remove a couple small distractions on the bottom by cropping another inch off the bottom. (OK, I'm known as a nit picker on occasion.) Nothing wrong in trying new approaches, as everyone sees it just a little differently.

[tim]

With more cut off it might leave the photo a little unballanced to my eye, but would remove the distractions. I still quite like the first one, just for novelty value, i've never seen a flower pic done like that before!

[sparker1]

Tim, I think you might enjoy this site (below), as it gives many examples of different ways to view and shoot flowers.
http://www.leppinstitute.com/LeppImages/garden.htm

[tim]

Thanks sparkler, sometimes I think flowers are far simpler than women. Actually flowers are always simpler than women.