Apothecary's Fascia, Peeling Amber

Found this one on a Tuesday before the shutters went up — a Victorian-era pharmacy front, the gilded lettering lifting at the edges where decades of damp have worked under the paint. I pressed the ring flash almost flush to the board to drag out every ridge of the original brushwork, the pharmacist's confident capitals giving way to a trembling descender on the final letter, as if his hand had cramped by the end of the word. There's a warmth in the amber ground that the cold flash can't quite kill, and I didn't want it to.