This shot is actually a bit old (I took it several years ago) but I thought I’d put it up due to it being one of my personal favorites thus far. I shot this rhododendron (I hope that’s what it is) prior to one of my cousin’s weddings in Boston a few years back. It’s one of many white flowers in a bush (as you can probably tell from the background) and I took a bunch of shots of the bush, but I liked this one the best probably due to its large depth of field (DOF). In fact, the depth of field may or may not be too large. That is one thing I might be inclined to change about this photograph.

Were I presented with the opportunity again, I’d try to take a shot with a smaller aperture opening (higher f-stop number). The aperture size I used (listed below) gave a very large DOF, which makes the background blurry and helps focus attention on the subject of the photo. It’s a great effect to use in order to divert attention while still keeping the background interesting. In this particular photo, however, some may believe the background to be too blurred. Were I a true photographer at the time, I would have taken multiple shots at different settings. Alas, I did not. But hey, that’s a pretty good idea now that I think of it.

One other thing that I notice is just a little thing, but I accidentally cropped off a bit of a leaf on the right side of the photo. I personally don’t think it really detracts from the photo, seeing as how the subject is the flower and not the stem it’s on or its leaves. However, some may be inclined to disagree with me. Speaking of crops, now that I think about it, I do actually wish I had left a bit more space between the edges of the flower and the edge of the picture. It seems a bit cramped on the right side.

One final thing I wish I had done was use this flower to test my lens’s macro function out. Of course, this may or may not have been a good idea because I didn’t have a tripod, which would have made for a possibly blurry close-up. Anyway, here’s the EXIF:

Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 100 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV