Thoughts of Summer

As winter hangs heavy in Ohio, going into work when it's dark and coming home when it's dark and even seeing gorgeous sunsets from my office window but being unable to really photograph them, I start looking for organic things to fill the frame of my camera. Because I can only deal with so much still life until I start chomping a the bit to want to photograph something that occurs in nature.

So last night I stopped at our grocery store and bought some flowers, choosing a bouquet that had a beautiful variety of blooms that I'd be able to shoot and the yellow roses were part of that bouquet. Roses remind me of summer, of the season I'd love to have back again, so I set up the arranged vase on a black foam board and shot straight down at the heart of the rose. I used an F/8 aperture so I could get a nice balance of the edges of petals being in focus but still a nice soft bokeh as well.

Lighting on this was a single desk lamp on the floor pointed to the side of the rose and just the overhead lighting I have in the room since it's diffused under a frosted dome.

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Other close-up rose shots I've done: