Last winter I was working on a series of rose images in which I tried to capture the emotions/feelings connoted by different color roses. A red rose connotes passion/love while a white rose connotes innocence/purity. Last year’s image were, for the most part, macro/close-up images of single roses.
While I was at the market yesterday (remember the pomegranate), I also picked up several white roses along with a single red. As I had the “Pom-Pom” image formulated in my head before entering the market, I also had this rose image pre-planned. Keeping one white rose for my wife (I’m such a sweetheart!), I gently plucked the petals from the remaining flowers and created a nice bed of white petals. Then I plucked a single red petal (keeping the rest of the flower intact also for my wife; sweetheart remember) and placed it atop the bed of white. And that is how this image was born.
The petals were arranged on cardboard, placed on the floor and the camera (Canon 50D with a Sigma 150mm macro lens) was tripod mounted and pointed straight down at the petals. I overexposed the image by one stop for the white and came away with this image. I did a little processing but nothing out of the ordinary. Here is the result.
(1.3 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; +1 EV)
Now I couldn’t just stop there; not with all this time on my hands this weekend so, you guessed it, I took the image into Topaz Simplify and used the watercolor preset as a starting point to come up with this.
So there you go, you have your choice – digital image or digital art. I like them both. But I will say that in my mind the first image captures the tension between passion and innocence better the watercolor. But I do think the watercolor is pretty!
“LOVE”-ly imagery. Thanks for sharing how you preconceived this one, and the detail is spectacular.
Beautiful Ed. Love the image, the placement of the red petal amongst the white is perfect. The detail in the original image is also great.
I love the color and contrast and the pure whites in the first photo. Gorgeous!
Hi Ed,
Really cool!
I foudn the picture very nice but I love your digit-art more
They are both lovely….but I like the digi art best too!
And yes, you are a sweetheart to make sure and give your wife roses too!!
whatever it takes for the wife to get the roses i’m sure she so deserves!! i’m all for the photograph and how challenging that red in the bed of white must have been. beautiful result of your careful planning!!
I love the digital art you have created here. Very, very lovely!
I am with you on the first image…
You are doing such creative work! Wonderful!!!! I like that you preplanned this image, and then proceded to execute your idea. And, it worked really well (especially the part about giving the roses to your wife). I like both, and continue to be impressed with your Topaz work.
An excellent idea, Ed! I really like the photo and passion and innocence are exactly those feelings that it evokes in me. I like the vivid colours and lightning, even though it seems that there’s a slight shade to the left side from the red petal, it’s like the light was not even through the whole scene. But this is nothing to worry about. The altered image is interesting but it doesn’t bring the passion/innocence feeling, perhaps because it contains more colours than just white and red. It reminds me fish scales that have often this perly colours.