Theme: Contrast.

        This week was a bit difficult. Ironic, right? First, I tried my utmost to capture something different. Second, I tried even harder to resist turning my photo in B & W (as it was the most obvious). Clearly, I failed both my goals:( Nevertheless, the image below was probably the best from what I had to choose from. The concept was simple. A dried rose, a wooden backdrop to rest the rose on and black cloth for the background. I turned off all the lights and focused a single continuous light on the rose from above. I pointed my flash towards the ceiling and got to shooting. After a 20 takes, I had the below image. 

          The shot was edited in LR to strip away all colors. I also played around with the RGB curve for maximum contrast. I also tweaked the black and shadow sliders until I got just the right amount of grey to black hues. Here's a before and after of the above image (with a preview of some of the LR tweaks).

          Funny enough, the rose was not my first attempt for this theme. Initially, I opted to capture several contrasting colors in it's simplest form. I aligned some pencils and took a few shots. The photo was nice, but it was just "okay." It did not have that "wow" factor I was looking for. Here's one of the captures post-processing.

          As mentioned before, the biggest struggle was choosing the right photo for submission to 52 Frames. Here are some of the other rose options I shot.