If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation …
Henry David Thoreau

I took this photo of a pair of Morning Glories this week. I normally prefer photographing flowers under a slight overcast sky, but Morning Glories seem to light up from within when the sun back-lights the delicate trumpets.

I’ve been deeply delving into studying about back-end functionality and Internet marketing, so haven’t posted in nearly a week. Learning great stuff, but after a day of reading and taking notes, I felt a great need to finish the day with a flower. It’s nearly mid-night, but I’ll end the day with a Morning—Glory that is.

A Dahlia from my garden called Edge of Gold, which is one of the giant Dahlias. I chose to zoom in pretty closely to eliminate any background distractions. I love coming in so close on a flower that you experience it. When we see a flower, our experience of it is heightened. We may smell the fragrance, feel the sunshine, hear the birds singing. Even our very appreciation of it enlarges our experience of seeing the flower. I believe this is why so often when we take a snapshot of a flower, the image’s impact is a disappointment in relation to the impact that flower had on us. To make up for the loss in the other senses involved at the time, we need to amplify the visual aspect.

To further concentrate our experience, I’ve also applied a custom, slightly grunge, frame effect around to anchor the view towards the center.

Viewed so closely as to be an abstract, this peony has the energy and grace of a ballet dancer. It almost seems to be leaping at us—fushia, leotarded legs thrust powerfully forward in a Rites of Spring dance. Soft, silk-dyed TuTu billowing out and behind.

I took this a few years ago with just my little point and shoot Olympus C5060 using it’s Macro super close-up capacity. A great little camera.