My vote goes to ree for his creative photo of the rose. Most people (including myself) would probably just try to take 20 different photos of the rose close-up.
Also, what I instantly saw in Ree's photo was a potential for improvement (both in terms of composition and post-processing in Photoshop). Below is an enhancement of ree's photo that I quickly did in Photoshop Elements because I 'saw' what this photo could become (not implying that I'm some photo/image genius..just I could see the photo being pushed further to give it more impact and emotion).
Because I can see that you're trying to push yourself and become a better photographer, I included a few tips to help in future photos:
- To give a photo more impact and perspective, try to
not put the subject of the photo in the centre of the frame. Being in the centre is what anyone would naturally expect, so by putting it out-of-centre, the viewers eyes see something unnatural and therefore focus more. Of course sometimes the best choice is centering it, but if you want something a little creative and different, then off-centre is an option.
- When you are focusing on a specific subject - and therefore trying to bring out that object - another thing you can do give even more emphasis is to
get in closer. You'll be amazed at how your photos gain more 'impact' and command more attention just by actually taking a step or two (or three or four..) closer to your subject. If that's not possible (eg: maybe if you had stepped closer to the rose, your hand's shadow would have cast itself over the flower), then with post-processing in Photoshop (or whatever program) a simple thing to do is crop the image down.
- Another thing which I have been really focusing hard on with my photos is
framing. Not all photos have to remain the same dimensions as they are from the camera. If it's a wide landscape shot (eg: the rainbow photo I entered a couple of weeks ago) it might be beneficial to crop the photo so that it has wider proportions. I did this with your rose photo because I felt the hands were an important part of the photo, so I cropped the top and bottom to make the photo wider. I then also cropped the left-side of the photo to put the rose and camera off-centre.
All the other modifications I made in Photoshop such as the lighting, saturation, black-fade borders (proper name: vignette borders), saturation and so on are things you will gradually learn if you keep playing around with Photoshop..and of course if you continue to build your passion for photography.
Keep pushing your boundaries of creativity ree. Well done!
My vote would have gone to Ree. It's very creative a picture. 
I didn't really like the noise but it was inevitable due to the high ISO which I used to capture the brightness of the lights of the buildings and darker details such as the sky, the water and the bridge structures. 
