The Papaver Rhoeas in my garden called out for some complimentary colors, so I added some store-bought Iris. I photographed the combined composition straight down on my light box, using a macro lens from a distance and eight exposures.

As usual with this kind of image, the exposures were biased to the high-key side, with the sequence starting at the darkest image (the correct exposure, according to my light meter).

I needed some depth-of-field because the Irises had some depth, but not a great deal, so I selected f/11 for my aperture. At ISO 100, the exposure sequence went from 1/30 of a second to 4 seconds.

Recombining these exposures was an issue of using layering and painting techniques in Photoshop. I started with my lightest layer, the one shot at 4 seconds, and where there was not enough detail I layered a darker exposure on top of it, painting it in very selectively.