Bird of Paradise (View Larger)

This "flower" is a favorite of photographers, because of it's

exquisite beauty. I took this early one morning, after a a brief rain.

I used Gaussian Blur and a bit of the Pixel Bender Filter in my

processing.

The large view is quite stunning!  The pixel bender seems to have affected the background more than the flower, but I like it!  The water droplets enhance it as well.  Great clarity and lighting!  There is just one place I think looks a little smudged from the effect you used.....around the point of the flower on the far right.  What do you think?

The background effect is more from the Gaussian Blur than the Pixel Bender. Sometimes the background just takes away from the beauty of the main focus and I find to partial blur or completely blur, a way of managing it. In this case, many of the leaves were torn and discolored and added nothing to the image and I therefore, I completely blurred them. The slight dark area on the "flower" in the upper right is a bled from the background and should have been edited out, but I must admit, that I missed it. My bad!

Thank you and I love the spelling of your name!

Leo,this is a splendid image with strelitzia flower,is true it is like a bird in splendid colors,blur and pixel bender you did makes this more attractive,i like the result,compliments.

Thank you for the kind words!