Into each life....

Welcome to the forum. The B&W treatment looks great, so do the drops. Looking forward to seeing more!

I'd be tempted to crop some from the top or include all of the third flower.

Amazing depth of field for f/2.8!

Welome to NSN!!! Like the tonal range, but I do feel it needs a slight boost in the highlights IMHO. Very nice composition and details!!

Gorgeous!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

Lisa

Very pretty -- I like the B&W treatment.

Welcome, Dami!! Would like to see more of the flower in the upper right.
Also, look forward to seeing more of your posts.

Some good suggestions already mentioned, and I also think that a ever so slight touch of levels/curves in PS might benefit this shot.
The comp looks okay, the details are just fine for these eyes, and I too like the black & white treatment. Nice!!
A great shot for your first post!!!

And, .......... a big welcome to the FM forum Dami!
A 20D, the 100mm macro, ...................................... you're hooked!!!

Keep'em coming Dami, and thanks for posting this one!

Wow, thanks so much for the warm welcome and the fantastic comments on the roses.

Tom, I agree about the cropping. As I can't add the rest of the rose (darn it!), I guess I should try removing it. There are so many things to think about as you're composing the shot. When does that finally kick into automatic?

As I said, I'm pretty much a novice, so sometimes the terminology doesn't always click.

Jorge, when you said the highlights could use a boost, won't that blow out the highlights? Or are you talking about selective masking before boosting? Would that have anything to do with what Michael suggested with Levels/Curves? Because I'm not sure what final result you're looking for. Anyone, please feel free to show by example, if you want (if that's within forum rules).

Michael, yes, I'm very much hooked. At least as long as I'm on the backside of the lense and not the other!

Again, thanks for the comments! I know I'm going to learn bunches from this forum. It's nice to find a place where there's honesty without derision!

Dami,
I don't know b&w so someone else I'm sure can do better, but here is what I did. Looking at levels you've clipped the blacks a little and have room on highlights, so if you shot this Raw, you can recover some of that in your Raw converter. Instead what I did to recover a little of that was the Shadow/Highlight tool. In shadows I went amount 14, tonal width 25, radius 30, Highlights 3, 50, 30. Then I went to curves. Usually I start by keeping the midtones at 50/50 and tweaking the ends to make an S curve while seeing the effects. I thought moving the midtones up to 49/56 helped. Then highlights to 21/14 and shadows to 87/94. Here are my results. Again, use your eye and seek out what results you want.

Dami wrote: Michael, yes, I'm very much hooked. At least as long as I'm on the backside of the lense and not the other!

Well you're in trouble now!
Check the Family Get-Together motif that we have at the end of this year.
You are family now, ............ so you got to post a pic of yourself and introduce yourself to the gang, .................... or we will come looking for ya!!!

See ya!

Wow, Paul, you really made that POP! Thanks for the detailed steps. I'll keep this in mind for future corrections. I rarely shoot with B&W in mind. It was accidental that I desaturated in the first place.

Michael...well, I'll try to get in front of the lens...just the thought makes me jittery!

A late welcome from me too Dami! Some here already know I'm not too much into flower photography, but some shots do grab my attention after all. This one did too! The conversion to B&W may play an important role in that, because at times I enjoy doing that to images that don't really seem to ask for it too. It can always get you some nice unexpected results .

I was going to mention the tonal range issue too, but I see that a few have preceded me already. Paul's retouched version looks quite good to me. If you don't have Photoshop CS however, it could also be done (be it a little less precise) with levels. If you open the levels tool, you can see if you have a full tonal range in your image or if you miss dark or bright tones. If you like, take a look at this page. There's a nice part about levels and other useful tools there: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutor ... shop.shtml.

One other thing I thought about is if you tried the channel mixer on this image. I'm not certain if you know about it, but sometimes using just the red, green or blue channel for a b&w image can give an even more spectacular image than simply desaturating it. Let me know if you have questions about that!

Cheers!

Thank you, Arthur, for the welcome and the lovely comments.

I am a pretty avid PS user, and use CS2. That article has an interesting perspective on levels. Unfortunately, I'm not real confident reading a histogram. This particular image I did use the saturation slider in the ACR plug-in. Generally, I at least check the channel mixer for desaturating. It seems more to give a more vital image.

Again, thanks for the input. Lord knows, I can use it!