Hey - This is for David and a few others who have been asking about how these are made.
It is all about the thrill of the hunt - botany style. (I know - I'm a dork!)
I go in the morning/evening to get that great side light. Then I look for plants that are mostly in the shade accept for a flower in the sun. This sets up the isolation that I'm looking for. I take the photo on the dark side to avoid a metering mishap and blowing out the flower due to the high contrast and to reduce the amount of background detail. Once back on the computer, it is just a matter of tinkering with exposure and contrast to drop out the background completely and bringing up the exposure on the flower.
I'm not much of a photoshopper so it is mostly darkroom work and not that much at that. If you can get the contrast in the original by finding that ideal sun/shade combo, there is less to editing them that you might think.
In these two series (which I just did for examples) are 1) Original, 2) Increase black, shadows and whites, 3) Radial mask to darken around flower, 4) Brush to darken out anything that is still there, 5) Final after a little tweaking.
If you give it a try and have trouble - I'm happy to help.
Love the effect and process, very simple with an elegant outcome. I'll have to give this a try. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing Ruth!