Definition Of A Rose

I’ve said before how much I love working with florals; I have more of them in my portfolio than anything else. Sometimes, though, I think the flower is looking back at me saying, “Why are you bothering?”

As I’ve stated, florals are sort of automatic abstracts, and often florals don’t require great effort. It takes a good deal of work to mess up a decently composed and lit photographic capture of a floral. Not that I haven’t put that work in on occasion; sometimes the work pays off, and sometimes it doesn’t. But florals are like sunsets – they don’t necessarily require great artistic input to create an attractive work. It’s hard for me to walk past strikingly beautiful florals without pulling out a camera.

​I didn’t do much here, just some edging and lighting; enough to bring out the definition of the rose while also softening it. I think sometimes the trick an artist plays in abstract realism is a balancing act of just how far to go; just how much ‘abstract’ can a work take before loses touch with reality and potentially becomes just a blob? It’s a question that has no answer, and one I never tire of playing with.