[jdoermer]

I took these two pictures of the same flower with two very different results. What do you think?

[Rob Barron]

The second is certainly better than the first. The problem with the first one is that we can't find a well-focused part of the flower head: neither the centre of the flower nor the edges of the flower are sharp. There is a very narrow plane of sharp focus giving a bit of detail to part of the petals but that's about it. My suggestion here is you need to shut the aperture down a bit to get a deeper depth of field so that you can get at least part, and I would prefer, the whole of the head in focus. This would still allow enough blurring to separate it from the BG. I can't actually see what aperture you have used as the exif data isn't showing but I am guessing you were down at something like f2.8 or maybe wider. I think you need about f8 here.

The second shot has a sharper head so gives us a bit more detail though there appears to be a blue colour cast as the ground to the left has a distinct blue shade to it. You can get rid of that very easily using either levels or curves in PS. I don't think it needs quite as much empty space to the left of the flowers, it contains nothing of real interest to us in that area which is actually more than half of the photo.

Although I can see why you called the 2nd one 'cold flower' as the general tone is blue, mainly because of the colour cast. The 1st one though is not what i would call a warm flower. The image is a touch warmer mainly due to the BG lighting on the trees.

I have resisted the temptation to attempt changes to the colour and white balance as you have not given permission for editing and I entirely respect that. I hope the comments are constructive and of help to you.

Cheers,
Rob