Dahlia, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I placed this Dahlia from my garden on a black background, and lit it from the front using a small LED flashlight. In Photoshop, I combined three exposures to make sure the background went entirely black—and to keep the detail in the flower at the same time.

Exposure data: 50mm macro, 3 exposures combined using Photoshop layers at 1 second, 2 seconds, and 4 seconds; each exposure at f/32 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.