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Not finished with that leaf yet!

Nikon D700, Micro-Nikkor 105mm, 1/200 @ f4.5
Backlit with natural light & flash, centre-weighted metering, high key B&W conversion in SilverEfex Pro 2.

It's nice but I don't think it's really doing it for me yet. I'm not sure what - maybe it needs more blacks in it somewhere to really define it - not sure - for me it (and your other leaf on ice) look a bit too "washed out"?

You usually don't want too much black in a high key image.
I was really trying for a very subtle impression of the leaf against an all white background.

I did look at a high contrast effect in the other shot, but thought that it looked too artificial for the feel that I wanted.

Different strokes I guess. That is what makes our hobby so interesting.

Interesting concept and execution. It's great to see mundane stuff being photographed.

For me a few things that I'd improve would be the fuzzy area in the middle (? out of focus), clone out stalk and adjust the orientation (ie rotate 70 to the left or something to make composition balanced).

The overlapping left bit bothers me a little but that's just personal preference.

hth.

Definitely made me have a 2nd glance!