Thank you Robert. Thank you John. I am pleased with how this image turned out. I like the way the flower juxtaposes with the black background.
If you look at the thumbnail you will see more black to the right. After originally posting last night I quickly went back in and cropped a bit from the right because it looked like too much black to me. I think the cropped image (as posted here) looks much better!
I appreciate you taking the time to provide feedback. I tried a number of different compositions and liked this one the best. I did feel it was a bit different and I thought the white on black worked real well particularly after I cropped a bit of the black from the right. It seemed to balance the image better. And the fact that I managed not to blow out the whites was icing on the cake! :D
Gotta tell you a funny story. As I said, I am relatively new at this macro photography. My wife goes along with these things and when I wanted to buy a macro lens as a Christmas gift, she was very cool with it. So she looks at this image and asks me why I bought a lens that will allow me to only fit half the flower? :confused: Guess I have some explaining to do! ;)