Pollen

This was taken with a new-to-me rental lens, completely manual. This is a

flower in my garden. What do you like about the picture? What would you

change?

beautiful picture!  I like the colors and the tight depth of field.  A couple of things that you could try with this shot ( that may or may not look be improvements ) move the focus around the frame, move the frame to show more purple... Thanks for sharing! :)

Very nice shot.   With a macro lens , the depth of field is very narrow, so you need to decide what you want the focal point to be or you will have to do focus stacking to get more of the object in focus.  

I like the point you have chosen and how you have composed it.  Keep in mind that if too much of the foreground is out of focus, it will keep drawing your eye to the out of focus area.   

The lighting is very nice also.  Great job.