That is high praise. I did spend a lot of time working and thinking on what to do with the soft factor. My colour image was purposefully subtle yet detailed so as to get the viewer to linger on it and look beyond the plastic appearance. The second, as you remarked, is about texture and movement. I am not an artist but thanks to @Thomas_Do, I was inspired to be one .
after RT, get to gmic (equalize local histograms // -fx_map_tones_fast 20,0.2,11,0 // -simplelocalcontrast_p 25,1,50,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 opacity 40%), then silver-efex
Cracking image, beautiful flower. This was lots of fun to let loose and push the limits of color and contrast, keeping detail in the brightly lit feathered edges of the petals. Was trying to pay close attention to the blues and greens, also the incredible violet and brown anthers on the stamen. Exported as flat and neutral as possible from darktable, and took it all the way up in gimp.
I used a great deal of time in RGB curves to pull the colors within the gamut.
As a consequence I’ve got a nice color separation between yellows and reds: