Day of Atonement

May You All Be Inscribed and Sealed (in the Book of Life) for a Good Year.

Back in early August, I acquired a bouquet of Stargazer Lilium and shot and shot and shot

This is the final image of the series. I came out one morning to discover the few remaining petals and pollen scattered on the floor. In the vase all that was left was the stem and a few leaves.

This was shot with a small Leica P&S--the Leica D-Lux4 @ f/2.8, ISO 80, .6 s, manual exposure, spot metering. I don't remember if I used a tripod or hand-held the camera. (Too bad that info isn't embedded in the EXIF data )

I removed one vertical leaf from the left and cropped the right portion of the image to remove the part of the shot that picked up some extraneous background debris.

As I worked on the image, I wanted to achieve a sense of hope for the future as portrayed by the upper back-lit leaf. I also felt that the large leaf symbolically showed the scars of life.

I deliberately left the small stem on the right side in the image as a third diagonal pointing the eye to the large leaf.

Now that's an element that I would like your opinion on. Sometimes I look at the image and say, Yay!, other times, I think the image would be better without that small stem.

Thank you for looking and leaving your comments and suggestions.

Best wishes to all for the New Year,

Carol