A bouquet of red roses in the house is always an invitation to make photographs. On this particular day, I decided to put a roll of Ilford Ortho+ into the Rolleiflex SL66 to see if I could turn the red roses black -- perform a little photographic alchemy, if you will. There is no symbolism here -- for me, at least, I promise -- I just hoped the roses would look interesting on film. My favorite lens for the SL66 is the S-planar 120 mm f/5.6, and that is what I used here, stopped down quite a bit for deep depth of field. I shot at box speed since the scene was illuminated with natural light. I spot metered on the leaves, letting the highlights do as they pleased, knowing the film had me covered. In the end, I was delighted with the result, and I particularly like the contrast in tones between the 'black' roses and their reflections in the mirror.
