Gruß an Aachen

First, I am so sorry for worrying our friends about last night's storm. Our storms are NOTHING like those you endure in USA. Sure there was a lot of thunder and lightening and some strong winds. I think a few trees came down, and a lad got struck by lightening an an adjoining suburb. However, certainly no lives were lost, and all we really had to cope with were a few power outages.

Because of our small population there is nothing like the demands on power resources as you have on the Northern Hemisphere. So thanks so much for your concern, but we are all back to normal this morning, and it will only be a few more days, and we'll be complaining about the heat once more.

I think the storms will affect Victoria and New South Wales more than they bothered us here in South Australia.

Anyway - today I spent a lot more time thinking about how I was going to deal with today's blip. I tried many different settings to make sure I got what I saw in my mind. Actually it's nothing like my mental image, but sometimes the camera knows best.

My first crop was of the whole flower with the arctotis behind it. But when I blew it up to 200% and saw how sharp it was I decided to go with the much more severe crop, which displays the lovely curves and delicate colour of this rose.

Even more curvy and delicate in large.