Editing: Crop; adjustment layers for levels & curves; exposure tool - increase exposure slightly; very slight amount of filter difuse glow over entire image; noise removal from background only; clone out little stem thing on lower right corner; resize, smart sharpen; sharpen tool on flower center.
This is actually considered a weed rather than a flower - it is a giant thistle bud that hasn't finished blooming into the typical purple thistle flower. This one is growing on a dry, desolate corner in Taos, New Mexico - my husband and I walked past it on the way to photograph some poppies I had noticed from the car. I was struck by it's unusual beauty and spent a lot ot time photographing it. My husband even got a black bit of foam board from the car to put behind it but I liked the ones with the natural bokeh better.
This "flower" reminds me so much of the alien flowers on the episode of the original Star Trek where Mr. Spock finally became almost human when the spores from these alien flowers entered his body. Captain Kirk was the only one not affected and had to pick a fight with Mr. Spock to get rid of the spores (can you tell I'm kind of a Trekkie - of the original Star Trek!). Jill Ireland was the guest star in that episode. This thistle bud reminds me so much of the flowers that shot out the spores. I almost called this picture - Watch Out For The Spores - but thought too many people wouldn't get it.
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This is my favourite entry - it is beautiful but not the usual cliched flower picture! The shape is interesting, I love the DOF you've used, I like the crop (i.e. slightly off-centre but without too much negative space). Very well done indeed - hope you get the blue ribbon.
8 - Very nice. Nice colors. Looks like it would be difficult to tweak the saturation up a little with resulting contrast issues in the white. Nice as is though. Perhaps just a little more empty space/soft background colors around the alien beauty within the frame 'somewhere' (left likely) may have given this a little extra. Sure it looks very good wall size. Nice 'study'. Perhaps just the sepals(?) at the fore on the right in focus too, but not sure - at any rate any change in the dof would likely diminish the soft and dreamy effect you've achieved, so who knows.
Earthly thistle I think - subtle (intrepretative) colour is wonderful, beautiful isolated radial view, a great specimen. Superior focus, tonality & dof - good work.
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