{"id":7091,"date":"2016-02-23T21:25:23","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T02:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7091"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:50:05","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:50:05","slug":"dying-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7091","title":{"rendered":"Dying beauty"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I got up this morning, all four of them were nearly\u00a0dead. I was thrilled.<\/p>\n

Death has never been a taboo subject for me. In photography, I love shooting dead and dying things – old buildings, insects, cemeteries, birds, racoons.<\/p>\n

Last week I got this beautiful amaryllis as a gift<\/a>. It was in full bloom. I took a few quick shots of the four big blossoms and planned a full shoot for this week.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I overwatered it just before I left for a five-day trip. When I got home, the blossoms had\u00a0wilted – and by this morning, they\u00a0were gasping their last.<\/p>\n

In this state, though, all the fine points of the amaryllis stigma\u00a0and anthers\u00a0were gracefully obvious, contrasting with the faded petals.<\/p>\n

\"_IGP9618<\/p>\n

And even though the bright, uniform red was gone, those petals now have a depth and subtlety in their wrinkled faces that was invisible before.<\/p>\n

\"_IGP9228<\/p>\n

It’s a good subject for a macro lens and a hypermacro too.<\/p>\n

\"_IGP9224-2<\/p>\n

A lesson in seeing beauty through intimate, breath-holding focus.<\/p>\n

\"_IGP9248<\/p>\n

If you want to learn more about caring for an amaryllis – here’s the USDA web page<\/a>\u00a0I should have read before I overwatered mine.<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 1987, the year that the genus name Amaryllis<\/a> was designated by botanists to apply to South African bulbs only.\u00a0Hippeastrum is the correct genus for the flowering house plant that we know in the Americas. But, because of the longstanding confusion among botanists about the name, the generic “amaryllis” is still used.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I got up this morning, all four of them were nearly\u00a0dead. I was thrilled. Death has never been a taboo subject for me. In photography, I love shooting dead and dying things – old buildings, insects, cemeteries, birds, racoons. Last week I got this beautiful amaryllis as a gift. It was in full bloom. … read more Dying beauty<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317],"tags":[90,752,35,82,105,498,338,156],"class_list":["post-7091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","tag-90","tag-amaryllis","tag-art","tag-beauty","tag-death","tag-flower","tag-hypermacro","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7091"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7111,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7091\/revisions\/7111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}