It was the dried remnant of a coastal flower — the seed-head skeleton of what had been a flowering plant in summer — still standing on its stalk against the wind. The petals were long gone. The seeds had blown out or been eaten. What was left was the structure: a small umbrella of dried spokes, perfectly silhouetted against the setting sun.
It read like a metaphor. The flower was dead. The sky behind it was still working. 2025 had been a hard year. Every year that ends — even the hard ones — eventually hands you off to the next one.
I shot it wide open at a fast aperture to throw the background completely out of focus. The flower is sharp. The sky is soft pastel gradient. The sun is rendered as a soft bright glow. Everything in the frame other than the flower is impressionistic — only the dried structure of the plant is rendered with full detail.
I made the frame. Drove home. Came back to the studio in the new year and the print was already what it needed to be.
