Hi. I'll start by pointing out a couple of reasons why I don't think this broke the 5 score barrier.
1) The focus seems soft.
Sometimes it can work, but here I think it is too subtly out of focus to look like it is meant to be. It may just have been soft from resizing down to 640x513 without applying unsharp-mask, in which case a quick USM would do the job. Most of the time, DPChallenge voters like a photo to be perfectly crisp, that's just the way it goes.
I think this photo could also be improved by cropping in closer on the flower by the thorn, and leaving out all the dark black area around the edge which seems to have no purpose. This would make more yellow so the photo would be more appealing to the general audience.
Silk and thorn is really more of a contrast than a conflict, isn't it? Flower exposure is good, but most of the rest is too dark. Composition is pretty good; the yellow flowers capture your eye, and lead you down to the thorns (aloe?).
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