Gladioli

Was fed up yesterday with all the rain so thought I'd try something out indoors. We've got some gladioli in a vase at the moment, so I thought I'd try a kind of high keyish shot. Dug out my remote trigger and fired the flash full power at the wall behind the flowers to blow out the background. Could do with getting a second flash some time to fill in too, but I'm reasonably pleased with this shot for an experiment:

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/75189466@N00/4​993931220/

The flower is beautifuly lit. However, the stems are ugly in comparison. I'd be tempted for a crop that concentrates more on the flower aspect.

I have to disagree with the Fonz... The stems are part of the whole and cannot be missed. They help complete the composition. The flower - and I mean the central one - is very nicely lit and focussed. Somehow I think this would work much better against a black background - with the same nice light on the petals.... But as it is, it is a very nice photo!

Fair comments guys, thanks for the feedback.

A black background would work well, but I was trying a specific backlighting exercise as it was something I'd not deliberately tried before with off camera flash. I agree that the stems look ugly in comparison to the blooms, but I kind of liked that juxtaposition so left them in, here's one that you may prefer with just the flowers in shot:

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/75189466@N00/4​998097208/