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All Flowers Fade
22 February 2023
Three a.m. unable to sleep. So we go down to the bunker and look over our February photos.
Camellia. Captured with an iPhone 6 Plus at f2.2, 1/60 second and ISO 32. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop.
It's been an odd month. We've been at the hospital and skilled nursing facility almost every day. Cameras aren't practical in those cramped quarters but smartphones aren't a problem. So almost everything we've shot this month has been with our smartphone.
We have spent the month surrounded by the bedridden.
It hasn't been much of a deterrence, though. Limitations invite art. When you can't do everything, you intelligently choose among the possibilities. You find expression within the form.
So we've been shooting what has caught our eye even if we could only frame it with our smartphone's wide angle lens.
Yesterday, returning from the skilled nursing facility, we had to meet a city inspector at the family house to sign off on a furnace installation. We had a few other things to do around the house, too, but we stopped to take a photo of this camellia.
Even though it was fading.
Now why did we do that, we wondered. And then the obvious struck us. We have spent the month surrounded by the bedridden. People who have fallen ill. Faded flowers.
So at three in the morning, we desaturated the background to let the flower stand out even as it itself fades. We wanted to show the beauty that persists even as the end approaches.
Because it's true. Beauty persists.