Mirrors inside reflect parts of flower to create a soft border effect. Joseph tells us "I do many photos with this technique because as an artist, I find the results are more artistic than normal captures. Lately, I've been combining this technique with Photoshop filters and third party filters."

 Joseph used an Epson 1640 scanner to bring the image from Velvia into Photoshop 6.0. 

TwinDahlias, Dave Brittain 
Dave certainly likes his flowers. His winning photo was one of six he submitted. This one was taken using his Canon D30 and Tamron 24-135mm lens set at 89mm at f11. The D30 was set to ISO 100 and 0.7 seconds. Ya gotta love digital cameras. They remember every setting. Once in PhotoShop Dave tweaked saturation slightly and applied a light unsharp mask. 

Moth and Bee, Jay O'brien
To get working distance from the insects Jay used a Sigma 400mm lens mounted on his Nikon F5 for a frame filling image of these two sharing a flower. That big 400mm lens was steadied on his Bogen tripod. Jay used fill flash to bring out additional detail and really make his subjects stand out from the background. The rich colors are courtesy of Fuji Velvia.

Botanical Garden Eyelashes, Steve Hirsch
Steve tells us "visit Planting Fields Arboretum on Long Island quite often. I happened upon this flower. It's 'eyelashes' and blush caught my eye. It took several shots at different angles to create the look I wanted. ". Steve captured the flower with his Nikon F5 and Nikkor 105 macro lens on Fuji Velvia. The image was scanned using a Nikon LS-2000 scanner. The final captured image was sharpened using unsharp mask and cropped.

Inner Glow, Tess Campbell 
This flower image was taken in sunlight from a window and backed with a piece of black foam board to get the dark background using my Olympus C-2100 UZ digital. No manipulation other than re-sizing was done to the final image.