Lost Dreams

Lavender flowers.

 

The lavenders have just started to come out in my garden. This is a rather lovely compact variety that we got a while back from a local specialist lavender nursery (I think it's called Little Lady). It suits a small bed and its scent is heavenly.

 

I took this for the Macro Mondays Broken theme this week. I wasn't sure I'd bee able to do anything this week as I a pushed for time just now and it was a bit of a last minute rush job, but I was pleased to be able at least to take part. I am sure I shall (eventually) enjoy looking at other folks ideas :)

 

Often when I see a broken flower stem in the garden I feel a bit sad - the plant aspires to so much and it's a shame when it doesn't quite get there.

 

But in a way that's a metaphor of life and something we all have to contend with from time to time, and more often when we are young...

 

In all the image covers just over 2 inches in width and most of the flower heads are within 2 inches except the very blurred ones perhaps which are a little more.

 

Thanks for taking time to look. I do appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the image :)

 

With thanks to Pascale for giving me the emotional inspiration for this image!

 

[Hand-held in daylight; auto-focused with Vibration Reduction on. Processed first in LR to darken; add contrast; slightly increase clarity (no vibrance or saturation adjustment though); quite a lot of attention to the crop and angle (finally used rule of thirds with the diagonal emerging from the corner; interestingly a horizontal flip didn't work). Then to Affinity Photo and soften in Topaz Detail for dreamier look; strong dark vignette; depth of field blur and then finally unsharp mask to recover some of the texture detail.]

Done