Gerbera

[zafra52]

I feel that regardless of how good or expensive your camera is
it can never replicate accurately what your eyes see.

[Matt. K]

Big, bold and beautiful. This is "in your face" photography! It demands to be confronted.

[surenj]

Perfect! Just add bee or waterdrops to taste...

[zafra52]

Thank you for the comments. I did'nt add the water drop this time as I have done something like it before. The bee was hard to find. I decided to go for simplicity.

[latch]

I love this shot, and really enjoy taking close ups of flowers myself. I particularly love how sharp and detailed the flower centre is in this shot. Because it gets darker and the detail smaller towards the centre, I reckon it looks a bit like a tunnel or perhaps a wormhole!

Since the flower centre is what captures my attention when I look at your photo, I wonder if a slightly tighter crop would improve the picture. There are only 4 small places around the edge of the frame where the background can be seen past the flower petals, and I think I find them just a bit distracting. Recomposing to eliminate these would could put more visual emphasis on the flower centre, which is sharp and detailed and interesting. It would probably make the whole image a bit more abstract as well, which you may or may not want.

I would agree that it is very difficult for a photograph to replicate what your eyes see. I have shot Velvia slide film for landscapes, and the results are spectacular. However, Velvia technically over-saturates colours and so technically does not replicate what your eyes see. Somehow, for landscapes, the more saturated colours make the photos better convey the feeling of what it was like to be there in real life. I've heard some people say that the enhanced colour saturation compensates for the fact that a photo is just a small rectangular image, not a fully-surrounding experience.

So the question becomes: should our photographs accurately replicate the image that our eyes see, or the feeling that this sight inspires?