Breaking Beautiful

Red Flame Tulip, Magdalena, NM, April 2011 (photo edit March 2012)

I was digging around in my photo archives tonight and found this image I took last spring with my D3000 and the f1.8 lens for super-shallow depth of field. Truth be told, I forgot I'd planted this kind of tulip and can't wait for them to bloom again; in the meantime I really enjoyed playing in Photoshop and Topaz B/W Effects. (As you can see, I mostly re-colored the image... I love color too much to go black-and-white, I guess.) This variety's red flame petals mimic the patterns that ignited tulip mania and are now known to have been caused by tulip breaking virus (TBV). Proof positive that sometimes "bad" things lead to unexpectedly beautiful results.