The contrast and colours are very powerful and sock it to me!

I am uncertain about the slope; I keep tilting my head to look at the image.

Having seen what John Stankewitz did with DOF in 1922 Underwood, I've been thinking that going for a very small aperture and then getting rid of unwanted background detail in PS (which I don't use!) is a better idea. I did that on Les, although stupidly I used Gaussian Blur on the background and then did a final USM for posting which undid about half the blur!

So I was wondering if having the front petals in focus would help or hinder the artistic composition. I'm not sure but I now know that I'll 'bracket' my DOF a bit more, I did it on Les and it was only the F16 that worked.

Great sharpness and contrast indeed! I love how bright the flower is against the background..a very good job.

I think this is a good water lily picture. Better than many I’ve seen and certainly very, very much better than those 200 or so I have taken (and deleted). The stamens has a nice yellow colour and the inner petals look pure and white. The petals at the outside are a bit blue, but it looks just right and very natural. I also like the deep blue background and the fact that I can see some details there/some natural environment (without details or blurred details pictures look too PS cut and paste I think).

The only thing which bothers me a bit with this picture is that the petals in the front are not as sharp as the rest. I do like pictures of flowers where only parts are sharp, but here too much of the water lily is sharp to have some unsharp petals I think.

My pictures of water lilies usually get burnt out or grey and dull. What did you do here – how did you measure the light to get it so pure and white?

This is a very well done image Eugene. Nice color and sharpness. The front petals are not as sharp, but I don't think it is a big issue because your eye is drawn to the center of the flower.

in my eyes... it is a very well exposed image. bright colors and sharpened on the right focus. the yellow correspond with the blue. how did u get the glowing inside the flower? amazing. also the diagonal direction of flower is just better than if it was horizontal. i like it.

... for your encouraging comments. I give additional comments on my image for Rex and Caroline - perhaps I should have put all your names but these were the two I saw with queries before I went to work :))

Best..

Eugene

This image certainly complements a beautiful subject. I personaly have no problem with the angle, nor the OOF foreground petals. The eye is drawn straight passed them anyway to the seemingly spotlit centre. It's almost as if there's a parabolic* effect with the petals (*any pendants out there please forgive me if that isn't the correct word:0)

By the way who's the eye in the top right corner?.

I don't know what has taken me so long to comment on this beautiful image...

I like the composition of this image a lot more than your second image of the same subject. The exposure on this seems to be better visually than the other image too. The only real problem for me is the shallow depth of field here. You corrected this in the next image, but the histogram seems to be higher on the second image and the composition does not have the same excitement. This image with more depth of field (sharp focus) would be most excellent.