Mother and Father
I began a project last winter photographing an amaryllis at home with the objective of shooting a different perspective every day for the life of the plant… a total of 18 days. After a week or so, it felt like there was nothing new left to discover, so toward the end of its life I began incorporating different background elements into the picture. Just before the plant was about to totally disintegrate, I went over to the cemetery and brought home a photo of a headstone from the 1800s, as well as a picture of the head of a bronze statue downtown. The composite’s overall lighting is dominated by the picture of the amaryllis where I was shooting indoors with diffused natural lighting. After compositing the three images using Photoshop's “soft light” layer blending mode, I applied a warming filter.
Nikon D800E. The base image of the amaryllis was shot with a Sigma 105 macro, and the statue and headstone with a 24-120 mm lens.