Well, yeah, the picture is of one flower, but when I see a description saying there were six flowers and a bud on an infl and the picture shows a single, lonely *picked* flower, I begin in my mind to question if the other flowers were not as good or if the arrangement was poor, etc. Like something needed to be hidden. (On a spike of multis, i'd be suprised if anyone could take a pic of a single flower without getting at least a petal tip from another in the frame.) The camera hides nothing, and if the photographer had to hand pick the flower to get a good photo, was it really worth 89 points? On an AM of 89, this makes that suspicion even greater. For a score that high, *each* flower better be damn nice and they better look great as a team on that spike. The pic should focus on a particular flower, sure, but I'd want to see at least a hint of one or two of the others to make me not ask if the other six flowers were just as nice. If the other flowers were inferior to the photographed one, but the photographer included even just a tiny bit of another flower in his atttempt to focus on the best one, I'd probably never think twice- just something about *removing ONE flower* from an inflorescence tells me there was something worth hiding??? Were the other six crippled? Did the petals twist funny? Probably not, but why'd they pick off this one??? Just seeing a single makes these thoughts linger. So, I'd say shoot the single flower ON the spike... avoid picking off a single flower from several for a quality award photo is overall a bad choice, BUT, I wasn't there and don't know the circumstances...
Other folks, please chime in. Am I alone on this? Thinking about it too much?
-Ernie
