It was a good year.

[Dennis Bishop]

This was taken near the end of November 2011. In 2013, an early warm spell followed by a cold snap resulted in only a single flower on the same hydrangea plant.

Nikon D3S, ISO 800, f/8, four images focus-stacked, 60 mm macro lens, white foam core as a background

processing

aligned and blended in Photoshop
cropped a small amount (mostly for composition)
Flypaper Textures -- texture layer below masked vegetation
Topaz Simplify -- Watercolor II, 80% opacity
Alien Skin Snap Art -- saved Watercolor preset, Color blend mode, 74%
Flypaper Textures -- texture masked off vegetation, 19%
3 black & white layers -- 2 Fractalius (1 masked off vegetation), 34 & 76%; Topaz Simplify edges; all Multiply blend mode
Snap Art -- Stylize Line Art, brown & white layer, Multiply blend mode, 70%
gradient vignette

[Paul Lagasi]

Interesting POV, love the effects and composition. Good background, only thing that I'd remove or darken so it matches the rest of the image, is the greenish light thing in the bottom right corner but that's just my feeling...Nice work Dennis.

[Randall Farhy]

I really like the color palette used for this image, it fits the condition of the plant and season perfectly. Well composed and the choice of a vertical works well for this. The soft and smoother bg contrasts nicely with the scratchy textures of the subject. I also concur with Paul re: the light green patch, it's a bit distracting in that hue. Thank you for posting your steps, it has helped me experiment with multiple tools and layers.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Dennis, lovely image! I think I like hydrangeas past their prime more than when they're in full bloom and this illustrates why.:S3:

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I really like the juxtaposition of the dead leaves and the flower head Dennis. Good job with the masking and the pastel BG contrasts well with the bolder colours of the plants. Well processed and thought out.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . Good job with the masking . . .

Thanks, Jackie. The masking took a long time, but it wasn't really all that difficult. The plant is quite close to the house, hence the white foam core in the background. Even though there was some shadow on the foam core, it simplified masking -- a good thing because of all the narrow features I wanted to keep and the small spaces where I wanted the new background to show. I used Select>Color Range as a start on the mask. Even though the shadows were weak and not well-defined, I had to increase the fuzziness setting so high that some of the foreground was included, although not all of the background was excluded. With a duplicate copy also open to show the actual image, I Alt-clicked (I'm a PC person) on the mask thumbnail of the original to see the mask and painted with black and white at a fairly high magnification to get it right.

[Mitch Carucci]

Elegant simplicity...

And thanks for your detailed description of your processing.

[Judy Howle]

Beautiful colors, nice composition and I really like the background texture.

[Anita Bower]

You are a master of creating beautifully colored images. I love the bg. Nice outlines. This is not my favorite of your images. I find the dead leaves distracting from the blooms. For my taste, there is too much going on in the image; I don't know where to focus. As always, lovely processing.