I suspect the flower would have stolen the show regardless. Nicely done.
A lovely performance :-)
colors, contrast, definition, sharpness all superb. But, there is often a but, perhaps just a touch more stem and perhaps just a hint of a vase through some dodging and burning? Something like a subtle curve coming from just below the petals?
Thanks for the comments Brian, and you are absolutely correct on the stem, but it was impossible to do at the time. I had an attractive pyramid-shaped glass vase that was to feature in the composition, but it had been rescued from a dusty corner and needed a good clean. The cleaning was quite successful but getting the inside free from water residue and/or condensation turned out to be not easy (it's ok now). As far as the flower goes, it had a short stem to begin with and my inexpert attempts to fix it at the optimum angle to shoot resulted in an even shorted stem ...
WOW; love this unconditionally