Pad 97 - Willow Blossom

[Mike Farley]

Day 97 and despite winter's best attempts to hold back spring, a couple of recent milder days gave the plants an opportunity to blossom, this willow amongst them.

Getting the image presented a few challenges as the wind was causing a lot of movement and this needed a high ISO to achieve a sufficiently fast shutter speed to counteract it. This meant it was difficult to stop down to get the depth of field I wanted with a 100 macro lens, so I went for an alternative approach. Switching cameras, I opted for one with a smaller sensor which meant that I could use a lens with a wider focal length. As this is not a macro, I could not get as close as I wanted and cropped the final result instead. I would still have liked a bit more DOF, but this was a good a result as I could manage on the day.

Panasonic DMC-G3
Leica DG Summilux 25 f/1.4 (50 mm equivalent for 35 mm)
1/500 sec
f/5.6
ISO 1000

[Paul Heester]

I think you did well in the circumstances. Even the slightest breeze can ruin outdoor macro shots. I particularly like the progression of the blossoms from right to left. Im wondering now if flipping the image may improve as we tend to look from left to right.

[Mike Farley]

Typically, the eye moves from top left to bottom right, although subject matter and placement will also have an effect. What happens is that the image is scanned in a series of rapid eye movements known as saccades, so the eye will not necessarily come to rest at bottom right if something of interest is found first. This does have implications for composition, as subjects on the right, lower right especially, can have greater dominance. Reversing the image does have some benefits as the diagonal now goes in the natural direction of the eye and the space at bottom right is no longer empty.

Against that, the in focus blossom does tend to hold the eye, whereas as shot a circular movement is set up so that eye will want to go back to the left to the main bloom and a circular movement is established, which result in a more pleasing and hold the attention for longer.

One question which I am often asked when I discuss this topic as part of my "Aspects of Composition" presentation is whether the left to right viewing of images applies to people in societies which do not read left to right, as well as people who are left handed. Both good questions and ones to which I have not yet found an asnswer. My feeling is that left handed people tend to view from left to right as it is a part of our culture, but this is not necessarily an absolute. Most of the research has been undertaken in the West and, as far as I am aware, science has not yet provided an answer to the question about people in other parts of the world. If anyone has a definitive answer, do let me know.

Anyway, I have reversed the image as Paul has suggested. What do others think?

[davidc]

I prefer the flipped version. Although on the second version it seems like there is greater contrast between the background and the "last" blossom?
Tried two monitors and a phone and it seems consistent?

[Mike Farley]

I prefer the flipped version. Although on the second version it seems like there is greater contrast between the background and the "last" blossom?
Tried two monitors and a phone and it seems consistent?

I don't see it myself and it does not seem relevant to the discussion of which orientation works best. The only difference is that the reversed image is a bit more highly compressed as I altered the JPEG version rather than the original. So, in the interests of science, here is the JPEG created from the original PSD file.

[davidc]

Strange, on the cheap-as-you-like work monitors the effect is far less pronounced than my calibrated ones at home and my calibrated phone

Anyway I brought it up because I wondered if the change in composition might lead to a perceived change in local contrast somehow? The thing that came to mind was this -

http://www.businessballs.com/images/shadow-illusion.jpg

Where A and B are identical colours but the eye tricks us into perceiving them differently.

[Mike Farley]

I have seen those optical illusions where our perception of tones is influenced by those surrounding them, but I would not have expected something similar to occur simpy by reversing the image. My monitor is also calibrated and far from cheap, but I could not see the effect you did.