First Post ever- flowers

It took me a while to figure out how to post at under 100kb. I hope this turned out. I took it in the Botanical Gardens- no tripods allowed. I did some pp work on it. I darkened the shadows. Appreciate any feedback.

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HOw much did you darken those shadows? The white flowers on the right side are a distraction. I would ahve gotten closer to the blue flowers to avoid having any other colored flowers in the frame. There seems to be some blown highlights in this shot.

Hi CarolP, I think this would be a nice pic if the highlights weren't blown. And maybe focus on the blue flowers more.I'm not one to critique much but I only notice becuz I do this alot myself(newbie here). I've noticed that when the sun is high over my head I get pics like this. And blown highlights.JMHO.
BG.

Wow... what a place to photograph.
The high lights are coming from the reflction off the flower.

(This is easier to say than do... but its great for shots like these)
Get a small amount of white traslucent materal and put on a small frame, cardboard will do so you can fold and put it in a backback or something. You will then have an broader beam light which will add a glow and help the highlights.

I think its over saturated. I love saturation so I over sat all the time ...

Thanks for the feedback.

I am attaching the original photo before the color and contrast editing that I did. Would anyone do anything different to it?
I do like to oversaturate. Is the blown out part, the white of the flowers that lack detail? They looked better before downsizing.
I had a really hard time taking decent photos in the gardens and it is beautiful in there right now. I think I should use a different lens if I go back. I took it before a lot of the reading I have done on this forum .
The photo was taken with a Digital Rebel XT but I had a lens on it from my rebel film camera that I was told was interchangable. Most of my photos were not very sharp. I was disappointed. It was also hard to hold the camera steady and even though it looked bright in there it was through glass. I don't know if that makes a difference. I am just learning to use this camera.
llaamaboy, I don't understand what you do with the material in the frame.

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Don't know if this is better or not. Too much saturation?

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I don't know if I like it better or not either. The blue certainly does stand out now but I think I notice the blown out edges more now. I guess next time I better just take a better photo to begin with. Thanks for your help.

just to confirm this (sorry for threadjack)...blown highlights: total overexposure of a region causing effective "white out" with no actual image info?

PS. good composition too

xft.y wrote:
just to confirm this (sorry for threadjack)...blown highlights: total overexposure of a region causing effective "white out" with no actual image info?

PS. good composition too

Blown highlights with no detail - white as white can be. Also called Clipped. One very nice thing about RAW (and other graphic formats?) processing is you can set the clipping points. That is, you can see where and how much "blown whites" you get and can actually set the amount of clipped whites and black (no shadow detail). Its very close to the detail one might get following Ansel Adems processing/printing system.

The open beta project of Adobe Lightroom is excellent for this.