I was hunting for something to shoot with my DA35mm. I had only these dried roses in a vase lying on the shelf and a funky cactus on the window. Well, better than the dark rainy mess out there.

The original rose pose:


They look wicked in green:


Then a cactus which looks like some form of a sausage. Spiky one though. DOF was more thin than I thought so it got screwed up a bit but the overall look is still kind of funny.

[daacon]

Interesting series - I like the cactus shot noce DOF (even if you did not mean it)

[Ole]

I like the green rose - it looks less "tired" than the original! Good texture, focus spot on.

If the background in the cactus photo disturbs you, you can blur it in Photoshop. I'm more disturbed by the burned out areas, in particular the lower right, which tends to attract my eyes!

[Maffer]

Thanks for the comments. Indeed the background is burned out which is a result of impossible situation. The whole cactus is a huge mess of tentacles lying next to window and cannot be moved nor does it allow for another angle for shooting. You should have seen the wicked position and angle I was when taking the shot. One big spiky tentacle was running over my neck so it was very unpleasing position to be. And the camera was almost upside down. The build in flash didn't work very well as fill-in flash here and resulted in uneven lightning. Some ring flash would be nice to have.