Thank you. All flowers still in the yard and doing well:) Well they are doing ok, the general lack of rain is a bitch.

The first was done with a single flash manually set, bounced off a Lumiquest card, from above me on the right. I wanted to darken the background and since the flower is dark, I wanted more then the shadows provided.

The second was sunlight at about 13:30 according to the EXIF. I like the “harsh” mid day light for some flowers.

The third and forth are natural direct sunlight at 4:30 in the evening.

So, I guess no, I made no special preparations. However since they are in my yard, I can keep coming back time and again until I see the right conditions. In this case the conditions were good direct light, availability of good shadows for a background, the amount the flower was open and the accessibility to a nice bloom in the above conditions without lugging a stepladder down there:)