The Susans

Our daylilies are done, so I cut all of those bare stocks down and left the foliage. It looks somewhat better now. The echinacea patch is not doing so well either, but it looks a little less forlorn now that I've deadheaded the worst of the decaying specimens.

However, when we stopped by the garden at the museum, there ware many rudbeckia (yellow/orange coneflowers aka brown or black-eyed susans) still doing well enough. I wandered about for a few minutes taking a few freehand macro photos. For a change, I will show you some of my photos. lol

The focal point is clear in this ↓ but there's other stuff going on, and the background is light enough to peer into it. So, I think that although the eye lands on the focal flower, I think it can also roam about the image. I’ll consider that to be a positive in this case  

This ↓ is a soft focus with a much more out-of-focus background than the first photo, but there are spots of colour, which, I think, make it pleasant. Some photographers, however, would not appreciate the soft focus and would wish for the flower to be tack sharp  

This one ↓ I didn't like very much until I cropped it into a 1:1 square from the original 3:2 ratio that was very dark on the much extended right. After cropping tightly, I think the result is fair enough without so much dark, negative space.

By the way, I don't mind photographing imperfections in the flowers as they age and wear down, but I know that many people don't share my aesthetics.