The first three parts of this critique are written based purely on examination of your photo. "Final thoughts" is written after reviewing your score, photographer's comments, and voter comments.
TECHNIQUE Lovely duotone here, I think. The brownish earth tone works well as a background to this beautiful flower. The dof leaves the left-most, more distant parts of the flower softly out of focus, which draws the eye back to the petals on the right, which are sharply detailed and wonderfully textured. I also like the way you've controlled the dynamic range to avoid blowing out any of the lighter areas. However, my monitor is fairly bright (an LCD iMac) and I wonder if your details were bright enough for voters who were using CRTs?? I bet this might have looked too dark for some voters, and you might have lost some points in the voting for that. In summary, a beautifully detailed shot that might be a bit dark for some.
COMPOSITION I love the composition. The de-centered flower, very close crop, and softly bokehed background work very well. The beautiful clarity and balance result in a wonderful study of a flower.
EMOTIONAL IMPACT If you don't get slammed for being too dark, I think this is a very well-done image, with a nice degree of pop. Just lovely.
FINAL THOUGHTS Your commenters obviously didn't find it too dark, excellent! Most seemed to like it quite a lot and just gave minor suggestions on composition. Your final score of 5.8 is well above average for this challenge (87th %ile). That strikes me as a bit low (and I wonder if you were disappointed) but this was a very large challenge with lots of attention grabbing shots. In reading your photographer's comments, I was struck by your mention of a border. I went back and did a double-take on the photo and sure enough, there it is! In my estimation, a truly successful border is one that a viewer doesn't notice. Congrats on a perfect border!
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