Thanks @Phil_G - for subjects like this that stand alone in a somewhat blank field, I usually shoot with a fairly wide aperture to preserve that OOF background as much as I can. Because the lens I use is very sharp even fairly wide and I do a lot of stacking, I know I’ll have critical sharpness where I need it and the resulting OOF areas fore and aft please me quite a bit. A while back I started a discussion about stacking here if you want to check it out.
The Platypod is a terrific little piece of kit, although I admit that some of these were done with the tripod. I’m lazy and don’t take my ballhead off the legs as much as I should. Take yesterday for example, I think I could have used the small footprint of the Platypod to make some of my compositions work better. And in my own backyard, too. No excuse.