Plate No. 06. Dried umbel at sunset, December 31, 2025, Oregon Coast — last sunset of the year.
Vol 06 · Plate 04
LAST SUNSET OF 2025
A flower remnant, a winter sunset, the last evening of a hard year.
$75.00
Standard 16 × 24 (vertical) · Archival photo paper · Signed
December 31st. Late afternoon. I had been driving the coast looking for something that would feel like a closing note — not a sad photograph, not a hopeful one, something in between. I almost gave up on it and then I saw the flower.
It was the dried remnant of a coastal flower — the seed-head skeleton of what had been a flowering plant in summer — still standing on its stalk against the wind. The petals were long gone. The seeds had blown out or been eaten. What was left was the structure: a small umbrella of dried spokes, perfectly silhouetted against the setting sun.
It read like a metaphor. The flower was dead. The sky behind it was still working. 2025 had been a hard year. Every year that ends — even the hard ones — eventually hands you off to the next one.
I shot it wide open at a fast aperture to throw the background completely out of focus. The flower is sharp. The sky is soft pastel gradient. The sun is rendered as a soft bright glow. Everything in the frame other than the flower is impressionistic — only the dried structure of the plant is rendered with full detail.
I made the frame. Drove home. Came back to the studio in the new year and the print was already what it needed to be.
"The flower was dead. The sky behind it was still working."
Every year that ends eventually hands you off to the next one.
The Frame
Conditions
Winter sunset, clear horizon, fast aperture
Status
First public release · End-of-year frame
