Okay, I have to tell you what I see, because once I saw it I couldn't unsee it: this looks like somebody just tossed a handful of banana chips at the camera.
I'm sorry. I know it's a flower. I know it's actually a perfectly dignified macro study of pollen-laden anthers haloed around a textured golden center. But it's also banana chips. In flight. Frozen mid-launch. Look closely at the one up top - you can even see a few crumbs of pollen drifting down from the movement.
This is one of the genuine joys of macro photography for me. You go in expecting small surprises - and sometimes you get that - but sometimes you get this. Sometimes the flower has a sense of humor, and you're just lucky enough to be there to photograph the joke.
Look at the textures, though. The petals melting from white to that buttery yellow. The pebbled gold dome at the dead center, like the surface of some tiny sun. And those little anthers - each one freckled, each one perched at its own jaunty angle, the whole ring of them caught somewhere between holding still and taking off.
I think this is what I love most about going small. The world gets sillier and more serious at the same time. Up close, a flower stops being a flower and becomes a whole tiny event - equal parts ceremony and slapstick.
We need both, I think. The reverence and the laugh. The breath-catch and the snort.
Sometimes real beauty is just a fistful of tossed banana chips, suspended in midair, with a few crumbs still falling, doing their level best to feed the world.