"Romance" - Rose

When it comes to romance, I doubt there's anything more iconic than the rose. Every girl knows that the only way to be really sure that your boyfriend loves you is if he brings you roses, right?

Unless you tell him to bring you roses, in which case the only thing you can be sure of is that he is able to follow directions.

In any case, since Monday was Valentine's Day, there are now roses in my house. Alas, they are not my roses. My husband gave a dozen of them to each of our two girls, which is actually much sweeter in my opinion than if he'd bought them for me.

Notice that the roses aren't red. They are a gorgeously saturated orangey-yellowish-red. The light was coming from the window on the right side of the photo, which seems to have made the outside petals cast an orange glow on the inner petals.

I think it creates too much of a saturated glow in the shot - almost garish, so I desaturated and adjusted the light a bit.

I think this ones still gives you the excitement of all that color without it being distracting. Also, I think that reducing the glow makes it easier to see the detail on the inside of the flower. (At least I hope it does.)

Next I though I'd see what happened if I started to remove the tint from the photo.

I really like this one. It has a sort of antique feel. I think it looks softer than the original.

In order to address the glow that the light cast on the inner petals, I decided to turn the open flower directly into the light.

Better, I think, but I still warmed up the white and desaturated the flower a little.

I'm not sure about this one. Am I losing too much of the power of the original orange?

Maybe, so what would happen if I lost all the color completely?

After I made the photo B&W, I also increased the shadows and highlights to create more interesting contrast. I really like the result.

Finally, I laid a few of the roses down together.

Although I like the lines of this shot, I thought it was a bit to predictable, so I went ahead and cropped it.

I also warmed up the photo a bit, but left the saturation pretty much alone. I think this is a much more interesting composition than the original.

Finally, I did the same treatment as earlier to remove the tint, and then I added a lot of grain.

I really like this one too, though I probably wouldn't be able to call it a particularly romantic photo of roses.