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| "Melange of Marigolds" |
Marc Chagall once said, "Art is the increasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers—and never succeeding." Well put. To me, flowers are nature's ultimate synthesis of form, function, and color. On an evolutionary timeline, they are latecomers. They appear in succession after mosses, ferns, and conifers. In their power to attract, they stand on an evolutionary pinnacle.
I've been photographing flowers regularly for at least 15 years. Sometimes I take a camera and go looking for them, but more often I find them entirely by accident, in the landscaping for a bank, doctor's office, or parking lot; in flower boxes at a shopping center; decorating a restaurant; fringing the tasting room of a winery; in the front yard of a neighbor's home. At the end of each year, I put my favorite flower pictures into a Flickr set. In this tradition I've recently posted the set of 2012's flower pictures. You can see them by clicking here.
Here are some tips for the best viewing:
- Ignore the Slideshow option, which renders colors poorly.
- Click the top left thumbnail (not the larger picture that's the theme picture for the set).
- After the thumbnail enlarges, click it again to get a black background.
- Click the Fullscreen option.
- Step through the flowers by clicking Next.
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Copyright © 2012 by Ken Marks
Fabulous collection of color! Admitting my ignorance, what is that striking flower with the bee on it in the October Morning image?
ReplyDeleteI'm stumped as well, Moto. It looks like a zinnia hybrid, but so far I haven't been able to confirm that via Google. I may have to submit the photo to a forum of flower lovers.
DeleteI'll ask my wife; she's likely to know.
DeleteThanks to Carolyn Dean, we now know that the flower is a variety of dahlia.
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