There’s a “Flora & Fauna” competition next week and it sent me scurrying into my photo library to see what I had for entry.

I ended up stumbling upon the pictures in this post:

The Automatic Rose

Now at the time, these pictures caused dissention, slit families, drove wedges between nation states…. (OK, a friend in work and I disagreed about whether they were any good). But since I liked it, I decided to use it for the competition.

But, being one of natures fiddlers and having seen some amazing stuff by a local photographer called Stephen McWilliams I decided to see if I could improve on it.

Here’s my new version:

Essentially, there were changes to contrast and vibrance, as well as an edit in photoshop to perform the selective colour element.

I quite like it, but my friend (yes, I too am amazed I can call him that after he was rude about the original) made the immortal comment -

“it doesn’t matter how much you polish a turd, it’s still a turd”

Humph.