The roses in the bouquet I bought last week were dried out and ready to be thrown away. I guess we live in a culture (and time) were old things are being thrown away just like that. Probably 100 hundred years ago one would still keep the rose petals and use them for something (though I wouldn’t know what).

Anyway, I looked at them and noticed the leaves had a great structure, almost paper like, and the colours were just lovely. Now I had a choice: either do some work for the firm or photograph those lovely old roses. As old roses are not always around, unlike work, I choose to photograph the roses.

I have a simple setup for the small things I photograph. I use a big window for light, an A-3 paper (either black or white, in this case black) as a background and a white paper to reflect light and/or if needed a black paper to block light.

The camera is on a tripod and most of the time I use a shutter release as I find it easier to work with. Actually nothing special though the results can be very nice.

Camera settings are simple: a low as possible iso, aperture between 5.6 and 11, depends on the depth I want to have and the shutter speed I adjust manually. I shoot manual as this is the easiest for me to adjust exposure just as I want it.

While creating the photos it came to my mind that my camera has the possibility for double-exposures. Since (real) film, I didn’t try this, but I today I fooled around. Actually, it is amazingly easy on a digital camera (at least mine) as it shows you the results and you can still adapt before finalizing the image. This feature I might try a bit more.

The idea I had in mind with the double exposure was to create some softening by taking one image with an aperture of 11 and the other one wide open. In the good old days one would use a B+W Softar (I or II) for this, I remember it took me so long to decide which one to buy (I or II), as they were so bloody expensive for a student.

I must admit I like the results, especially as it was my first time playing with this feature on my camera. As said, it is really neat as you can decide to re-take the images throughout the process, though I only used this once. For softening, the double exposure is not really a science.

Of course the opening image is a double exposure as well. All images sooc, taken with a xh1, the xf35/1.4 and the mcex11.

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old roses