“This is the sacred secret of love. Love a person for their heart and only their heart, and you will be rewarded with the best unconditional love in return. If you ignore the heart and focus just on a person’s outer beauty, love will ignore you. Love a person for only the beauty found in their heart, and that beautiful heart will always be beautiful to you.”
― Suzy Kassem

Now that I’m on vacation for a few days, I decided to spend a bit of time in my studio and do some floral shots to brighten the early winter days leading to Christmas. It’s so nice to be able to buy floral bouquets locally in even the coldest weather (being careful to wrap them for the car ride). I deliberately chose a selection of red and white flowers, in keeping with a Christmas theme.

I must admit, I have a bit of a ‘thing’ for chrysanthemums and have had good success photographing them in the past. The white ones were a bit more challenging, since the brightness tends to wash out details and to underexpose them causes all the foliage to be too dark.

This image seems to be a good balance and captured the warm glow of the flowers nicely, I think.

Now I have a nice selection of birds and flowers to share over the next few days. I’m also only a few days away from my 2016 goal of posting a photo every single day. It’s been a lot of fun and has kept me looking for inspiration on even the dullest days.

Thanks to all who follow, like, comment, and engage with me on this quest, it’s a lot of fun and I continue to meet interesting and creative people from around the world here. My son recently asked me if I would continue this into 2017 and I don’t see a reason why not.

Nikon D800
Tamron SP 70-200mm f/2.8 Di VC USD @ 130 mm
1 sec, f/25.0, ISO 200

Hi Resolution image on 500px

For more images like this, please visit my Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/EdLehming
or my website (some images available for purchase)
http://www.edlehming.com