To create this image of apparently translucent flowers, I photographed a bouquet of poppies—the flowers are Papaver rhoeas. First, I placed the flowers on a light box illuminated from behind. I used HDR multi-shot techniques to combine six exposures into this single, somewhat high-key image.

In shooting the images, I started with a mild over-exposure, and continued with bracketed over-exposures until the histogram was pinned to the right. In post-processing, there is no substitute for hand work to figure out how to combine an image like this one.

Exif data: 50mm macro, five exposures at shutter speeds from 1/10 of a second to 2 seconds, each exposure at f/11 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.