Before Christmas, I had a small bunch of peonies, given to me by a friend after my shoulder surgery. I photographed them recently here and here with a cupcake.

I kept one in a small vase on my desk, and gave the rest to a friend at work. The one on my desk had dried beautifully while I was away on holidays and so I couldn’t resist photographing it. I spent a few sessions with it, but here is the first five minutes.

First, a series from afar, seeing the whole flower, with varying edits to showcase the textures, the colours, the beauty.

And then moving in closer:

I am obsessed with these “Beauty in Decay” shots. I have many more, but they weren’t within this five minutes, so I will share them another time.

I know some other people have taken pleasure from photographing the beauty in decaying flowers – the colours become richer, the textures are amazing. I love the way this peony holds much of its traditional shape.

I wanted to showcase a couple of other photographers who have shown the beauty in decay:

Su Leslie, from Zimmerbitch – Su’s work is beautiful. She is a regular RegularRandom’er and if you aren’t following her already, I highly recommend you do.

Sue Judd, from WordsVisual – a fellow scientist, with a great eye for photography.

Laura Bloomsbury from Eljaygee – a London-based photographer who posts lovely photos.

Tish Farrell from Writer on the Edge – a writer, who accompanies her words with lovely photos.

And lastly, Kiki from Through a Lay(wo)man’s Lens – I’ve only just discovered Kiki via the Reader when searching the “Beauty in Decay” tag and I’ve found that she’s done a series on the exact topic. Be sure to take a look.

I also searched the #beautyindecay hasthag on Twitter and Instagram and discovered an enormous number of posts, many related to abandoned buildings.

So, that was my first RegularRandom for 2018. If you’d like to join in, please do so! It’s lots of fun. Here’s the idea:

  • choose a subject or a scene
  • spend five minutes photographing it – no more!
  • try to not interfere with the subject, instead see it from many angles, look through something at it, change the light that’s hitting it
  • have fun!
  • tag your post #regularrandom and ping back to this post

x desleyjane

Posted by:desleyjane

photographer, blogger, planner, scientist, dog lover, frequent flyer, daughter, sister, BFF, human

25 replies on “Five Minutes with a Peony in Decay (RegularRandom)”

  2. Well that was a lovely surprise, Desley. Thanks so much for the ‘feature’ and your v. kind words. Your decaying peony study is truly beautiful – all those colours and textures. Make me think of Versailles in Louis XIV’s time.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. Thank you so much for the lovely shout-out Desley 🙂
    Your shots are stunning as always; you’ve captured the subtle changes in colour and the crepe-paper like textures so beautifully. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  5. Pingback: Regular Random: five minutes with some upholstery materials | Zimmerbitch
  6. Pingback: RegularRandom: 5 minutes with a rotary hoe | snippetsandsnaps
  9. Pingback: Regular Random – Five Minutes with Yellow – Photography in Pearls

  10. Thank you for the mention! Love your peony pics – they’re beautiful flowers in all stages, and I, too, love to take pictures of them before discarding them.
    I think most flowers make quite a good photo subject in their final stages.
    Are you going to make a series as well?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  12. Pingback: Five Minutes with a Rose in Decay – RegularRandom
  14. Pingback: Three: Conflicted.

I'd love to hear from you!

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s