Roses done to death

Alright, I think I am calling time out, hiatus, nature break, with the roses still life project.  I have a file of 29 images that I quite like.  The one above is one of them, inspired by my silhouette figure series.

Im going to pursue the blue pottery still lifes and possibly do some rusty metal.

Roses....8

I was on my walk yesterday and noticed the "yard sales" were happening everywhere.  Yard sales are where people put out the stuff they can no longer store or stand and others who have a gap in their materialism buy it for next to nothing and get it home to discover.....

Well in my case, I was looking for a companion lamp to our existing table lamp.  Bingo.
And I also noticed this little rock crystal vase, ((middle of frame), that I thought might look good holding a rose. So there I was walking down the street with a table lamp in one hand and a little glass vase in the other.

Roses....7

I have created several rose still life versions of order with the silverware.  I thought a rose pose with a little chaos would be good, in honour of Higgs Bosun.

Roses....6

Since I was working with the Morandi still life idea, I decided to use props I've used in previous photos.

I lined the silver tea service up formally and lit them formally with roses.  I think I prefer the colour for most of this roses series but in this case, I can't decide if I like the normal lighting or the warm colour lighting.

Fifty roses.....5

Several times during the short span of the fifty roses project, I have felt as if I have bitten off more than I can chew.  I simply don't have new ideas at that rate.

Then I remembered Georgio Morandi, who had proved such an inspiration to a painting project from earlier.

I got out the Morandi book and looked over his images to see what I could find to help with the roses project.  I got some of my Morandi bottles and repainted them grey, black and white.

I then realized that the thing to do is to meticulously arrange the bottles so the shapes and placement work well.  Then I had to light them to do the same for tonal relationship.

It has helped me move the Fifty Roses forward another step.

Fifty roses.....4

I have done variations on a theme in this series but I don't want to bore people with similar images.  I've decided to rotate between the various variations to keep it fresher.

Here is a black and white image processed in Silver Efex Pro. It is a bright red rose with a red filter, which renders the rose whiter.

Fifty roses.....3

Fifty roses.....2

This is the second rose still life.  Some might think it looks frightfully like the first.

Well it does and it doesn't.  The challenge with series is to push them along; to see how many variations on a theme work.  Painters often paint variations on a theme and over the years, they are seen to stand on their own as distinct ideas.  So time will tell.

The idea in Roses 1 was the memento mori, mostly:  Living and dead roses, the straight razor, my old friend death in the form of the skull.

The idea here in Roses 2 is also life and death: The fact that we pass this way once, so make the most of it.

When I recall the idea of mortality, one of my first profound experiences of the idea was through Shakespeare's sonnets.  He devoted an enormous amount of ink to the idea of "cheating" death by living a full life:  for him, one could create children, write, and have faith.  Those were three ways of creating a kind of immortality.  You still didn't get out of it alive, but you left a legacy.

So my second rose still life is a homage to Shakespeare, hence the complete works;  the eyeglasses (symbols of knowledge), the prickly rose stem (it doesn't always come easy) and the dead roses say it doesn't last forever.

Fifty roses....1

Here is the first attempt in the fifty roses project.  As you may recall,  I foolishly decided to attempt fifty roses photos that are different from any done before.  Good luck.

The first was supposed to be simple.  I figured my best hope was to portray absolutely simple images.

It started simple, but then a tin cake plate got into it for dull spectral highlights; then a nice white plate, which just screamed for Death, who wormed his way in with the white plate as a halo.  The dead petals were added with the plate, randomly dumped.  I needed some balance, hence the dried white roses.  My grandfather's chipped straight razor was added to echo the shape of the coffee pot and direct the eye up (and maybe just a smidgen of memento mori).......

And before you know it........anyway.