Hi Carolyn,
Thanks for submitting another assignment to the Icon Photography School. I trust that everything is going well. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions please send a note to: office@photographyicon.com
You certainly nailed the shallow depth of field portion of the lesson. Your image of the dried up sunflower is quite a dandy. The only thing I feel is missing is some sort of scale in the image. Part of me wants to know how big this is. To be fair I know what it is, and getting close is great. Here is an article on scale in photography on our site that you might want to look at. Of course the other thing you could do to improve this image would be to add some color. Again, that might be out of the question this time of year.
Here are some examples of nice images with similar subject matter.
There is something to be said for the timing of a photograph. I once did this experiment. I setup a camera to take a photo every minute of every day for a year. When I reviewed the images I found some absolutely spectacular images. The only difference between the images was timing. In other words, timing is hugely important to nature photography. The season, the light, the weather etc etc. It all factors into creating a wonderful image.
Now, as you mentioned you had some problems with your motion image. It’s great that you have learned the lesson of slow shutter speeds and bright light!
Sometimes when you shoot with a slower shutter speed more light gets let in all else being equal. So you have to control the amount of light using other techniques. You can change your fstop. Another option would be to use a neutral density filter. Another option would be to shoot in different light.
You could also go another router and shoot something else completely! For example something like this beautiful waterfall.
[attachment=0:2d3coooz]example of motion in a waterfall.jpg[/attachment:2d3coooz]
photo by paul bica
I hope you get the idea.
If you want you can shoot another one for your motion assignment and re-submit. It’s really up to you. Whatever will make you have more fun and learn more!