Magnolia Macro Sepals and Blossom Conversion to B & W

Magnolias are in bloom in NC.  Have tried different times of day and different poses.  The image on the left was actually one I picked and used a dark green cloth to lie the magolia blossom on it.  This allowed me to pull away the front petal so I would have a macro shot of the sepals.  Tbe petals are
really a soft texture. The image on the right was orginally taken in color.  PSE 11 used post processing.  I cropped, used clone tool to remove some dust artifacts, convereted to
B & W - then increased the contrast more after the B & W conversion as I wanted more black tones.
May have done too much.