New York

There’s something about flowers that are just past their prime, on the cusp of beauty and decay that’s really attractive to me (is it because I am, myself, in Shakespeare’s words, about to “mellow and drop into the rotten mouth of death?”)

Technical addendum: I shot this with my portrait lens (56mm f1.2). The top image is stopped down to f8, so is mostly in focus. For the bottom image I wanted to focus on just a few of the front flowers and let the rest de-focus a bit so I opened up to f2 – I’m not sure why that had such a pronounced effect on the background color which is more accurate (but less neutral) in the top image.