This is an absolutely amazing photo, but you should read the theme description again very closely. "Just the head of the flower, with a few inches of the stem if necessary.
Your photo can show absolutely nothing else besides this." Could you at least send me a private message and tell me how you did this because I love it and want to try it!

I read the theme and chose to follow the last part of the theme, "You could also use a very low depth of field to completely blur out the background making everything unrecognizable (other than the flower of course)." Yes you can see colors..... but can you recognize what made the colors? I hope this can be considered on theme still.

As for how it was done..... very easy. lights in the background (old Christmas lights) far back.... flower in foreground lit with snoot on light. VERY low depth of field with aperture set to 1.4 or so.

Very nice, great effects with those lights. Thanks for that info and good luck Author

Try it.... you can vary the aperture setting to make the "bokeh" bigger or smaller. the higher the aperture # the smaller the "lights" will be. The shape of the bokeh is determined by the lens and the type and number of blades it has. You can also take black (non-glossy) paper and cut out a shape and put it over the lens. You will have to experiment with the size of the cut out... too small or too big and it won't work. I think you can find some pre-cut on ebay really cheap.

thanks for the explanation. I know how to do some of it, but I guess it was the light on the flower that I wasn't sure about. A snoot on the light is the honeycomb thing right?

As far as the theme part of it goes, I think sometimes the theme descriptions can be so vague, so it is hard to tell what really can be on theme or not. And yeah, you're right about that last part about blurring it. I don't think that's what they had in mind (but I'm not in their mind ), but since it is not specific, I guess it's open. I do love this photo though, it stands out from ALL the rest of them in the contest!

Sometimes it is okay to "bend" the rules a little bit.....just not break it?

A snoot is like a cone that gets smaller at the end (smaller as you move towards the subject) that goes over the light/flash. I did in fact have a honeycomb disc at the end of the snoot too.

Interesting & original shot.