I photographed these Cymbidium orchid blossoms in a blue bowl placed on a black velvet background. Lighting was natural, ambient sunlight bounced off white boards and reflectors. Exposure and processing info below the image. I like the way the image looks like a mandala!

Exposure data: Nikon D810, Zeiss Otus 55mm f/1.4, six exposures at shutter speeds from 1/10 of a second to 1.3 seconds, each exposure at f/11 and ISO 64, tripod mounted; exposed using mirror lock-up and the Nikon MC-36A remote release.

Processing info: Exposures initially processed in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) and combined in Photoshop as layers using layer masks and manually painted-in with the Brush Tool.

I added a “kicker” layer for additional punch created by running five of the six exposures through Nik HDR Efex Pro.

The resulting layer stack was merged down, cropped to a square format, retouched, and spotted in Photoshop.

Next, I applied creative color and sharpening effects selectively, and at low opacity, from Nik Color Efex, Topaz Adjust, and Nik Viveza.

Merging the layers down again, a final pass applied filters—once again selectively at low opacity—provided by Topaz Simplify.