A Rose In the Springtime

A rose blooms on one of the rosebushes in our front yard at home as the springtime marches on. I would say that it is the first rose of spring, but I actually have no way of knowing that because there are so many blooms on both of our rosebushes. So I don’t really know who was first. And I wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of one rose over another. Because they do have thorns, after all, and those things can hurt you.

I’m not sure why the rose is the universal flower for everything. You know what I mean, right? You give someone roses for some special occasion. Fancy places have rose gardens. We sing songs about roses. Roses are red, violets are blue. But when I was a kid and we had crayons at school, one of the crayon colors was violet. So why don’t we say that roses are red, violets are violet? I guess because nothing else rhymes with violet. And this just sounds awkward: “Roses are red, violets are violet. Your dog is sick? Go see the Ohio vet.” Maybe instead that rhyme should be, “Roses are red, blue flowers are blue.” Or something like that. Anyway, roses are still a good representation of the entire flower population, I guess. No matter what silly rhymes we may have about them.

But back to this photo. I pushed the depth of field to the limit here to get the look that I wanted with the heavy “bokeh” or blurred background, which makes the rose stand out against the background even more. And then I did all of my usual processing on top of that. I’m happy with it.

About the Photo

A single RAW exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about the photo software and gear I use at the camera gear page.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Olympus M.Zukio 25mm f1.8