The Christmas Cactus is doing its annual thing - and so am I. Such a beautiful plant.
105mm macro lens, black backdrop, circular polarizer and tripod. Used my D70s instead of the new D300 since composing/framing "just so" can't be done hand held (at least not with my hands - I shoot about 4-5 shots at different apertures so that I can choose one that has just the DOF that I want for a given flower macro. Without a tripod the successive images in a set are all framed differently. I want the framing in a set to be *identical* and *only* the DOF to vary.) Waiting for the Kirk L-bracket so that I can use the D300 on my tripod.
The CC's flower is one of the best examples of the benefits of a circular polarizer where you might not normally expect it to make a difference. BIG difference - washed out vs vibrant reds and harsh reflections vs no reflections. Other flowers, tulips notably, exhibit similar traits.
I used the Nikon right angle viewfinder on this shot. It has a 2x magnification which allows pinpoint focusing. In this case the focus point was the magenta colored part at the lower left. On the full sized version of this image you can see that what appears to be a lighter halo around the focal point is really microscopic white "hairs". The upper right was intentionally left out of focus to provide a soft background for the brighter, sharper center of interest.