Experimenting with a long lens to do macro/close-up to better control field of view (better control of what's in/out of the background). Got what I was looking for here - a blurred mass of identical flowers providing a nice background for the subject.
I have a new strategy for getting better backgounds. Rather than start with a subject and then try every trick in the book to keep the background under control (not busy, etc.), I've starting looking *first* for a nice background and *then* for a subject to place in front of it. Makes for an interesting exercise.
Sometimes it's hard to make yet another image of the same old flower without it looking like the same old flower. I said that I wasn't going to do many daffodils this spring, but was wrong (again).