Pretty flower, nice lighting, but the black and white of the rest of the plant looks plastic (I know it isn't) I don't care for the selective color on this image. Good luck in the challenge.
What's lost on me, is that with the green staalks, and the relative bland background, why this was turned into a selective desat. I think the red/yellow would have stood out a bit more elaving it fully colored. It just seems a bit too drastic.
The head-on flash adds a few very very strong shadows, whilst removing most sense of texture from the flower itself. You have at least managed to keep the detail there, even though I would say that bloom is over-exposed. The de-sat? Whilst well done, I just findd it strange in a composition where one would have thought the flower ought to stand out on it's own.
Background is way too busy for my taste, and here's an example where better bokeh would have helped. The selective desat also doesn't quite work here, imho.
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