Thanks, Doyle. It's always nice to hear from you and I appreciate the guidance. I think your comment about manually adjusting the focal point is the issues here, because I went back and checked to see if I had cropped it, and it appears that I was trying to focus on the center bud, but didn't quite get it.
Nice work Maryanne . . . a unique focal plane and intriguing crop. In my opinion, it might have been an even stronger composition here if the focus was on the center yellowish bud . . . your sharpest focus appears to be on the perimeter of the shot. Often, with the Macro type shots, it becomes necessary to manually focus . . . or set the auto focus to dynamic and at least manually adjust the focal point . . . and perhaps that's the case here. There's a lot of potential (IMO) for this to become a great shot . . . it's already most of the way there!
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