This photo made me late for work. Only five minutes, but I still had to sign a correction notice for my tardiness. I obviously need to leave the house earlier if I intend to take pics on the way. Sheesh!
I had a hard time deciding on the crop for this. Those out of focus flowers in the foreground are a bother and initially I opted to leave most of them in, in order to keep more of the background flowers, but when I saw it after I posted, I decided to eliminate more of them.
AND...I didn't even see the bee until I was in the middle of editing. He jumped out and surprised me. LOL I was too focused on the focus.
Well, I understand your dilemma with the focus. I'm not sure there's any other way around them, but it looks like you were successful in eliminating a lot of them. Of course cropping and such are somewhat subjective, but one option here is to crop an even tighter, thinner rectangle, a little over half way through the largest clump of sage. Although that takes out some of the lovely flowers, it would pull forward the flowers with the bee (if you can picture what I mean). A second option is to crop slightly above the shorter unfocused plant in the front. This would allow you to keep the in focus flowers, but it might make the picture look a little squatty. All that being said, it's really what you'll be satisfied with. Of course you can always leave 15 minutes earlier for work and try to capture them again! My favorite part of this picture are the colors. They are very eye-catching and vivid. Which is definitely the reason it would be hard to take any more of those beautiful colors out of the picture and why I think what you opted to do works.
Nice shot. I would try to shoot beyond where you are out of focus. I would try cropping different areas and see if they come out clear as sometimes they are not as clear as they look. Also go back and take more photos is a great option. Pretty colors as purple and green are my favorites. The bee is definitely a plus. See if cropping it keeps it clear.
