Thanks for the generous ccomments and all of those votes, folks!* I'm delighted my fuchsia picture pleased your eyes*
.
For those interested in technique, here's a little background on the picture.* I took it back in 2003, and my camera was the Coolpix 995... one of Nikon's swivel camera series.* The swivel cams were widely regarded as the best available tools at the time for macro photography, and their small sensors provided enormous DOF.* The picture is an example of table top photography.* I cut a stalk from the fuchsia plant in my backyard, suspended the blossom and leaves from an overhead clamp, and used dark colored foam core board as the background.* *Illumination was provided by sunlight, but I made sure to place the specimen in open shade to avoid harsh highlights.* The required exposure time was 1/2 second, so I used a tripod for stability, and triggered the shutter with the self timer to avoid introducing vibrations.* During editing, I selected the dark background and modified it... in this case to jet black, which I felt gave a sense of 3D to the flower.* I could have just as easily replaced the fcb background with a gradient, or placed the flower on a* background from another picture, as I did to the blossoms in these compositions.
These days I prefer the naturally blurred backgrounds resulting from the limited DOF of my 60mm f/2.8 micro Nikkor, but I count some of the shots from my early experiments with the CP995 and foam core board among my most successful compositions.
Thanks again for your votes!