The Sphinx + Repost

As a photograph, this was a great catch, even if it was not up to your standards technically.  It's good that you thought of an artistic treatment to "rescue" the image.  I think your choice of the posterizer filter here transformed the image into something that is not quite a straight photograph, but not quite an imitation of a painting, either.  I am happy to see that, as another way to use photographs as art (in addition to artistic literal photographs and making photographs look like hand-made drawings and paintings).

In this composition -- especially with this filter -- I find my eye drawn to the flower in the upper right corner, and to a lesser extent the one on the left also.  I wonder if there might be a way to make them less noticeable, such a bringing down the sharpness, contrast, saturation and brightness (probably more work than a simple dark vignette).  That would bring attention back to the beautiful sphinx.  You could also do that with a simple crop -- something like 4x5 vertical if you like that -- but this is such a nice composition, making the flowers less noticeable might be worth the work.    

Wayne, thank you for your suggestions. I will rework this a bit when I get a chance. The wings were a bit too blurred and the BG a bit too busy in the original version for my tastes.

I think this is beautiful, and a great treatment for this. 

Ed, sorry, I didn't notice that the title had "repost" in it.  I think I'd bring the two flowers down a little bit more via the same way you did the first time.