Natural Beauty Photo

Photographer’s Note

A beautiful flower taken in the Mamiku Gardens on the Eastern side of St Lucia. There is no trickery with the light here. I was just lucky to have the flower in full sunlight while the background was in shade. A telephoto lens (zoom set at 200mm) helped to fuzz the background and restrict the angle of view to just the dark area.

I'm not a botanist, so I don't know the name of the flower - maybe someone out there can enlighten us.

axiotea, jafadabret, pasternak, Traveller, manatee has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

axiotea (15933) 2006-11-19 11:13

Hi Jonathan,
To me that beautiful flower looks like an orchid...I like the contrast between the bright colors of the flower and the dark BG. Light and framing are good too.
Cheers,
Marilyn

jafadabret (39033) 2006-11-19 11:44

Jonathan, ce sont des orchidées considérées par certains comme les plus belles des fleurs. La photo est remarquable et la beauté des fleurs est très bien rendue.
Jacques

SampraS (617) 2006-11-19 14:37

great pic Jonathan!
The black background works here supremly
though it looks like it was cropped :)

Yep - it is Orchid

Cheers
Adam

Cormac (26449) 2006-11-20 12:16

That's a stunning shot, almost like it was done in a studio. The colour is very vibrant and the sharpness is amazing. Well done!

Traveller (665) 2006-11-23 2:55

I think, it is an orchid. Great explanation of the "technique" :), yes, a really wonderful effect.

pasternak (13038) 2006-11-23 4:52

What a beauty, Jonathan! The black background works fantastically to emphasize the flower's shapes and colours, and it became even more amazing when I read that it is natural! Excellent.

Cheers
Alexander

mikeo (12113) 2007-07-28 13:59

Hello!
Beautiful colors! Its almost impossible to achieve such great effect without any trick - in my opinion its really perfect photo. The contrast between the flower and the backround makes incredible effect.
Greetings,
Aga

manatee (4279) 2007-08-02 23:54

I dont know the name of this flower but looks like and orchid, by the shape, the texture and color, I had an orchid in home and looks like this. By the way this is wonderful, the color is perfect and the background too, match so good togueter, I like the texture you almost can touch it and is so interesting because you can see the flower to the rigth is like somw bug eat part of it petals, however even with this looks amazing.

With this pic tou proof than sometimes we don't need a perfect flower to make a perfect picture.

Congratulation.

Elias

Silversnow (2095) 2008-08-19 17:18

Superb macro, magnificent subject, impressive DOP, great colors and sharpness, very good idea to have a black background to bring the flowers even more into focus.