It is early summer and everyone who isn’t photographing themselves is photographing flowers – and, of course, the flowers are beautiful this time of year. Still flower photography has always perplexed me. There ever seems to be something of a cheat in color. I mean the color of flowers can be quite overpowering and modern cameras, the cell-phone prime among them – elevate color to all the vividness that it can possibly possess. Of course, there are people who excel at flower photography. And I admire those who have a natural pastel palette. As for myself, I am always torn between the flower for color’s sake and the flower as a proclaimer of symmetry. I am constantly experimenting with it, and have grown fond of photographing flowers at night by flash where the darkness of the background creates a wonderful emphasis.

Today I decided on the symmetry end of things and processed the glorious peony of Figure 1 in black and white, actually duotone. It was originally white with a touch of red in the center. So it appealed to me as an example of tone-on-tone and what can be created from it.