A Special Kind of Beauty

And faded beauty lingers still,

Lost forever to the world

But not to we whose hearts will fill

With what our eyes no longer see,

 A memory our thoughts will cherish

Of the beauty that will never perish.

The inevitable has happened, and a hard frost has put a sudden end to the gardening season.  All my lovely dahlias, who stood so tall and proud just a day ago, have turned brown and limp, their stems and foliage black and lifeless.  I gathered a great handful of the fading blooms, and headed inside to photograph their special kind of beauty, so that it will fade no more.

I set up my shooting table very simply.  A large black Bristol board (large sheet of cardboard) makes an excellent base, and my light was a small LED ring light plus a little ambient light from overhead.  I was going for extreme closeups and macros, looking for details and abstracts.  I added a handful of autumn leaves to balance out the flowers, selected my Nikkor 28-80 mm lens to go on my Nikon D7000 and, with my extension tubes on standby, I was ready to shoot.