Photoclubalpha

This was from the backyard this afternoon with my latest toy, Kiron 28/f2. Mounted on A900 with glass adapter, EV -3, flash -3, HVL20 flash in rear sync mode, sunny evening.. anyway here is the image. I am pleased with the effect. My objective was to get the sunlight on back of the flower and light up the front bottom with just enough light to see the details. I was also using f4 to blur the background. I have used rear sync. flash mode without having any idea of its purpose/merit in this context.
Any/all comments appreciated.
With best regards,
Sury

The rose itself is so pretty and sharp. I love it. Even the delicate petals are greatly reflected in the shot.
I would just try to play with the WB a bit and of course crop it (it's all to taste, but somehow I prefer not to put the subject at the middle)
Overall, I feel the gentle smell... TFS

Dr. Harout,
Thank you for those kind words. I am having a bit of struggle cropping the image. The problem
is that when I crop, the flower is becoming disproportionately large and creating an imbalance.
Any suggestions?

With best regards,
Sury

Sury- I often have the same problem.. Placing the object in the center seems to be ingrained in me.... So, I often have to crop to not have a static image. I am no expert, but I think I have some ideas on how to crop it, if you don't mind me giving it a shot.. John

John,
Absolutely. I will gladly take any and all the help I can get. I was centering it because I used the center point for focus and I was trying
to frame everything with respect to my focus point. Never the less, something to keep in mind in future.

With best regards,
Sury

Well here they are.. I tried a few times and these are the best three. Any way you do it the rose becomes larger, nothing you can do about that. The first one is just a simple re crop as is to decenter the rose. The second two are also slightly rotated and then cropped so that rose is balanced by more of the brighter areas of green. And one I obviously cloned out the grey at the bottom right. Let me know what you think. (this goes for all viewers) John

John,
At least I was not off the mark in my observation regarding the size of the flower.
I see both 1 and 3 more appealing because of the cloning you did. I guess the cloning of
that gray has pulled the border from inner edge of the gray to edge of the image and thus
making the flower come across smaller. Insightful. Thank you for that observation.

With best regards,
Sury

That's my try

You're welcome. There are probably others that can do a better job than I.
I tried to give more space on the right and still clone out the grey, but then there was a nasty black corner, which did the same thing as the grey. No matter how you crop it you did a nice job exposing the rose. John

John,
Thank you. This is one of the few times I went after how I wanted the flower to look. It took me
about 6-7 tries before I was satisfied. In the past, I played the numbers game. Take a number of shots
and hope I end up an usable one.

Dr. Harout,
As i was looking at your treatment, I think I figured out what is wrong with the composition. the branch in middle
to the left of the flower is making it look like it is the branch. since is a branch with another bud, that is
what making the flower look too large with respect to that thin branch. The branch for the flower is behind
the flower. Your post processing led me to that branch. I wonder if I blur that branch further if it improves
the over all image. Hmm!!! I will try it tonight.

It has been quite educational so far. Thank you, John and Dr. Harout.

With best regards,
Sury

I vote Dr Harout's version. After seeing his, he is closer to a 2x3 ratio. It makes mine look awkward. I 'd still clone out the grey though.

Here is something that I tried inspired by what has been done so far. What do you think?

With best regards,
Sury

That's a very nice image, and the lens is a keeper for sure. To answer your concern about the "rear sync." flash mode, that flash mode causes the flash to fire at the end of the exposure, rather than the beginning, as is default. The merit and use of that mode is more apparent with exposures with more action in the frame; the effect being that a moving element within the image will have a ghost trail leading up to the moment at which the flash fired and the image was properly exposed. There is little need for it in static shots such as this one, but it certainly does no harm.

Kevin,
Thank you for your kind words and the explanation of rear sync. I had a vague understanding but your example made it clearer to me.
The sunlight was behind the rose. I was trying to capture the back lit flower with natural light while properly exposing
for the central part which is in "shadow". One option I had was to bracket the shot and merge it. I was experimenting
(albeit naively) to get the outer flower using sunlight and inner one using flash. That's why I dialed down the flash to -3.
I am sure there are simple straight forward ways to obtain what I was going after, but I was having fun so I let it be.

With best regards,
Sury