Crisp and clear image, Wonderful colours, very good contrast, so this image has everything to be qualified as a very good post. Well done Steve.
Regards, Cornelius.
Hey Steve, caught this image of yours and have some thoughts and suggestions for you.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and to save you reading a thousand from me (entirely possible in my case, btw) ... I downloaded your image here and played around with the composition in particular. Hope you don't mind ... and you can see the crop I did ... here.
Aside from the crop, I did do some sharpening. The method I employed is a very good one and easy to boot. The proponents state that not as many artifacts are created from employing this method.
Given the size of the file/document ... the Radius setting was <1. Experiment yourself. You'll know when you've gone too far as the edges will start to take on a bit of a halo appearance. Dial back the Radius in that instance.
Some ... some, colour adjustment and a Curves Adjustment layer ... and ... done. Tried something different myself in that instead of the default for the Curves Adjustment ... I chose the "Find Dark and Light Colours" option.
Back to the main issue, in my humble opinion ...
Composition. A tad too much negative space to the left. The nice arc of the wooden wheel is lost somewhat, and indeed and in my humble opinion ... not much interest in the left hand side. Offsetting the blooms was more than appropriate for visual dynamics ... just felt that you could lose some of the left hand side. So ...
A bit of an extreme ... and perhaps, you could crop not as much as I have done. However, just some thoughts and suggestions and creative fodder for next time.
The camera and new lens will serve you well I believe. Nice natural colours, good clarity et al.
A very pleasant photo to view and but of course, thank you for sharing this look with us.
p.s. You'll notice that the inset is not placed equi-distance from the top and bottom overall framing and matte. Just had the thought that the wooden wheel would keep your viewers eyes up. Might work better centrally placed.
p.s.s. And in case this escapes your purview ... click on the image and it will enlarge for you. After which you can then download it for a closer look on your pc/monitor.