Flowers make me very happy. Their sight and their fragrance make me feel in a way that not a lot of other living or not living things do. I admire their ability to attract my attention as well as of insects, I love how colorful they can be, and how my mood changes positively when I am surrounded with flowers.

A few weeks back I purchased some annuals for my backyard, including a Denver Daisy. Everything on this flower is very photogenic. It doesn’t matter from which direction I approach this beauty, it almost always gives me wonderful photographic results. In fact, I truly enjoyed their beauty after they passed their prime. It was a different kind of beauty, but I loved it nevertheless.

In order to portray the difference of the live floral beauty and the dead one, I used a slightly different post-processing technique. I created painterly images from all, but I used two kinds of color schemes; a warm palette for the earlier flowers and a much colder and dramatic one for the second set. One image I digitally hand painted. This is a technique that I am currently studying, and this was one of my practice pictures.

All pictures were taken with the Lensbaby Velvet 56 lens, and I used a macro filter to be able to get closer to the blooms. Enjoy the show and let me know if there is one image that stands out from the rest for you.