Thanks Alpha, Now to try it on my own. By the way the GF says she likes it.

Slynky: This is what I was trying to do, just couldnt get their. I do agree that the dew drops are the focus of the image. I worked with duo tones and tri tones last night, trying to get the yellow cast, but wasnt working for me.

Alpha: No I dont mind at all. In this version I did not go for the levels at all, strate to the channel mixer, and it was the only tool I used. As I was responding to Slynky, last night I worked the levels, and then went to duo and tri tones, I dont remember if I worked the mid-tone slider though, I usually dont. What I didnt do was go back to levels after the conversion to grayscale/duotone, simply never occurred to me. As far as the curves, Im trying to learn this beast of a tool, and use the levels less. Never thought of using both.

JordyArt: And therein lies the art. The eye sees, and comprehends, trying to rationalize it, well that lessen it somehow. The two flowers together do cause a single field of white, I see what you mean. And it only abstracts the shape of the flower.

Now to all, in SueOs post, above mine, this is what I was referring to. I needed help, and asked for it specifically, and got it. Thank you. This is a great forum, and part of what makes it great is the sometimes, whimsical images and posts. The posting new stuff you had some fun with. I thought that by making another Critique it would make it easer for the folks to ask hey lam-blast my image, I need some help as well as I like this photo, but what can I do to make it better. Running such a forum would be a headache for the Mods though. Doing a separate forum would, I believe, after some thought, take away from this one. So now Im not sure if the best solution would be just to ask for help when you want it.

I definitely would be interested. This was the type of response I was trying to get with the subject of my prevous post. As far as learning to critique, I would be a go in this as well.

Thanks for the comments. Im still trying to figure out the quirks on the digi cam. The lighting was very flat in the beginning of my shooting. The day started out very overcast and cleared after about two hours. I should have gone back to the cherry trees after the sky cleared, but I didnt. The problem with shooting in Washington DC is that, even though there is so much to shoot, for $2.00 or so you can get 5 post cards of the same thing. But there is no since of accomplishment when you do that.

No flash problem. What Im thinking, and I vary well may be wrong, is that the main subject of the image, is exposed well, but the Hot Spots are Blown Out highlight areas. Im trying to think of how to explain this and Im not getting my thoughts into words. In scanning this would be due to the dynamic range of the scanner. If an image has areas that are very bright, areas that are mid tones, and areas that are very dark (look under the eves of the smaller building) you have to expose for the range of tones you want and the tones outside this range, go pure white, or pure black, or at least very close to those extremes and you lose most all detail. I have retyped this 4 times, and I cant think of any other way to say it. Hopefully someone has a better gift for language than I. Again I may be wrong, but I think this may be the answer. Regardless this is still a nice shot.

Not seeing an image, I would say that the flash coverage is too narrow for the subject you are shooting. I have only had the D7 for 5 days and have not yet experimented with the flash coverage and fall off. The flash is small on this thing, and though it appears to have a coating to help defuse the light, Im not sure, yet, how well it works. Hope this helps Quinn

Thanks for the comments. As far as the 4000ED is concerned, I love this thing, Ive been using it since last summer. The ICE is great on dust, and scratches. Ive used it to remove those lovely scratches that one hour labs tend to leave across the whole role. The ROC works fairly well. Helped to bring some usability to underexposed concert shots. But the GEM, well it tends to make an image to soft, in my opinion.

The technique that works for me is. I type my text , Highlight it, single click in the font box, and then just use the scroll wheel on my mouse to go through all the fonts loaded on my system. Hope this helps. Quinn