Ranunculus Asiaticus, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The Ranunculus plant came home with me for the garden. But first I snipped this bud. I photographed the blossom straight down in a small vase wrapped in black velvet using my 85mm perspective-correcting macro at a moderate aperture (f/16 by the lens, with an effective aperture of f/21).

The final result is a Photoshop composite (hand HDR) of three exposures, all shot on tripod at ISO 100: 0.1 second, 0.2 second, and 0.4 second.

Now in the garden, hopefully this plant will yield other blossoms for photography.