Back to my favorite floral subject. It won't be much longer before they're gone for the season. Make hay while the sun shines.
I'm giving a photography talk next week and one part is on composition. This illustrates "composing for the background" which would include placement of the subject within the background, background coloring, and background focus. If we want the subject to stand out from the background (why wouldn't we?) then these are all important considerations in composing the shot. Here I looked for a bud that had a good background element, fiddled with the tripod placement and camera angle to position the bud within the background element, and used an open aperture to defocus the background so that it doesn't compete & distract (while still keeping the subject adequately in focus - a balancing act). In this case IMO it helps using a dahlia in full bloom as the background as it complements the subject in terms of color & subject matter thus telling a better story.