Sunflower heads

I cleared the tubs of sunflowers from the deck last week. They have been wonderful, growing taller and taller and producing flower after flower in shades of yellow and orange, but they had been battered horizontal by a couple of really windy and wet days.  We had left the seed heads standing for the birds, and many have been well munched; now it was time to salvage the best of them for photography. I've always loved Van Gogh's studies of dying sunflowers, with their withered petals and crisp, dry leaves and seeds, and if I'd had more time I would have tried to find a more "painterly" background for them, but the weathered wood of the old table of the deck has good colour and texture and tones with the browns, greens and faded golds of the flower heads, and I like the little ruffs of sepals around the spiky centres.

I'm almost a week late posting these - it's been a busy week. I love playing around with things, photographing them from different angles, but when I've taken a lot of something, I'm far too slow at going through them and choosing just one (and even slower at deleting the many that really need not be kept).