Midnight Peony

There must be a trick to photographing light pink peonies that I'm not wise to yet. In color, the delicate variations in shade and the detail in the center become one mass, regardless of the camera settings, direction or intensity of the work shop light. It's not surprising, as the massive bloom is a wondrous tumble of tightly packed leaves...not a lot of floral architecture here.

When the color image is converted with PS3's black and white layer style and the various sliders are manipulated, the detail starts coming out and the translucency of the petals is amplified. A bit of whitening the whites and blackening the blacks with the selective color layer style and I'm calling it a blip. More peony test shots are in order some other time...I'll have to "borrow" another one from the neighbor's garden late at night.

Edit: I swapped out the image for one that was converted to mono using the PS channel mixer instead. It's more velvety and translucent. Thanks to blip buddy ~tmg for making the suggestion and leaving some great tips too!