Cropped & Rotated, Layers, Contrast/Brightness, Saturation, Deep Red Filter, Shadows & Highlights, Free Transform to line up layers, Master Opacity Changes, Sharpened Edges, USM, Resized, Saved for Web...
Relevance to Challenge: The Rose is a beauty standard in the world of flowers. Yet, as with most (if not all) flowers...an expanding bloom indicates that the rose is cresting the hill of its life-cycle and is beginning its slide to death.
Statistics
Place: 103 out of 137 Avg (all users): 4.9764 Avg (commenters): 6.5000 Avg (participants): 4.8750 Avg (non-participants): 5.0380 Views since voting: 730 Views during voting: 197 Votes: 127 Comments: 3 Favorites: 0
Second time I got one of your images in the same day!
I was a bit surprised at first to see that this image scored so low. However, considering the challenge it was entered in, I'm presuming that a lot of voters voted it down because they figured it did not meet the challenge. Your explanation above hints at your intention, but one might instead argue that the rose in full bloom is at the peak of its beauty.
With that said, you've done a great job of capturing a beautiful flower. The water droplets are certainly favourable, and you've done a great job of keeping all aspects of the image well exposed.
The tight crop is nice to see detail, but I might have suggested either a tighter crop or more negative green space around the flower. There is a bit of fringing around the edge of the flower, which seems to indicate either oversharpening or aberration. Some might like that fringe, and others might not have noticed. It's only a small nitpick that I wouldn't have voted down on in this case.
You've captured a nice subject; perhaps the voters would have liked a different or more interesting (i.e. better bokeh) background.