D90: White Coneflower pics for C&C

[pj rage]

I've had my D90 for almost 2 weeks, and I've been reading a lot here, but not really posting. I thought I'd share a couple pictures I thought came out particularly nice.

I believe the type of flower pictured here is a white coneflower, but I could be wrong (had to google to find out).

The first is after touching up the RAW file, 1/100, f5.3, ISO 220, 80mm (kit lens). The second I had taken some bracketed exposures and made an HDR. I'm guessing most of you will find the HDR "cooked" and/or completely overdone, but I kind of like the really overdone almost art/painted type look for this one.

Anyway, let me know what you think! I'm particularly interested in feedback on the first.. anything I should have tweaked differently that maybe could make it look better?

 

[WineO]

Pictures not showing.
Claude

 

[pj rage]

Oops! Here are new links, hopefully these work!

First:



Second:

 

[jakew8]

You pretty much summed up my opinion in your original post. I like the first shot and find the second to look too artificial. I question what you're getting with the HDR. I don't see the improvement in DR (dynamic range)--I just see punchier colors. Could you just crank up the saturation on the first one?

Edit: as far as composition goes on the first one, I think that the second flower in the background may be distracting, but I'd have to see a shot without it to confirm.

 

[pj rage]

I question that myself.. With this particular picture, I don't think there was much (anything) to be gained with HDR, I really only took the bracketed shots so I could play with HDR when I got home and see what happened - trial and error . With enough work I would think I could get the same result on the first image with a single exposure, but at this point as a novice toucher-upper/photo manipulator, I wouldn't know where to start. I suppose cranking the saturation would be a good start, but I'm not sure it would give the same results in the end as the tone mapping features in photomatix did.