The purpose of the Challenge for me is to force me to stretch myself. We tend to do over and over the same things, especially if we do them well. Normally, I leave an image what it is, that is almost the point of photography...to stop time, to catch and make fast what is ephemeral.

In this image, the structure and the colors were fine, but, I saw something else in my mind's eye. Therefore, I white pointed the background to white in levels, cloned out some cement lines, but the hands were bluish from the white point application...so I found the blue chanel and Voila`, the image became B&W without affecting the red flower in the hand, (too much). I don't know about other people, but I have about 12 different versions of this image now, some with a touch of Digital Velvia, which blew out the reds even worse, though I think that I liked that image better...but unblown reds, or as little as possible, seems to be the goal, and so I post this version. It should also maybe be noted that the was taken with the 18~55mm Kit lens as part of my continuing test to see if I can live with it on a general basis.

I worked this in 16 bit Tiff, and I hope that this hasn't striped off the EXIF. We'll see. (I also had an alterative title...The Spititual Agony of Beauty...Does anyone prefer one title over the other?)