Rosa 'Benjamin Britten' 2 August 2022

Rosa 'Olivier Roellinger' 2 August 2022

Because my mother tongue is Spanish I consult the RAE (Real Academia Española) dictionary on line. For this blog I rather like their definition of portrait:

retrato 

Del it. ritratto.

1. m. Pintura o efigie principalmente de una persona.

         Painting or effigy principally of a person.

2. m. Fotografía de una persona.

         Photograph of a person.

3. m. Descripción de la figura o carácter, o sea, de las cualidades físicas o morales de una persona.

         Description of a the body or carácter, or meaning, the physical           

         or moral qualities of a person.

4. m. Aquello que se asemeja mucho a una persona o cosa.

         That which resembles a lot to a person or thing

 5. m. Der. retracto.

 6. m. Ret. Combinación de la descripción de los rasgos externos e internos de una persona.

         A combination of the description of the external and internal

         Features of a person.  

Rosa 'Olivier Roellinger' 2 August 2022

 Because I am filling empty blog holes in June and July the dates of my plant scans will not match the date of the blog.

As a photographer I call myself principally a portrait photographer. I like to take portraits with eye contact from my subject. Every once in a while I like to shoot a profile.

Since I started scanning the plants from my garden in 2002 I have come to believe that my scans (scanographs) are plant portraits. I try to get the essence of a plant showing its colour as accurately as possible plus I mark the date of my scan which is always at 100% the size of the plant.

Of late I have become a tad more artsy. I have fun arranging the leaves of my roses or mixing hosta leaves with their flowers.

Today I finally cemented the idea that my scanographs are indeed plant portraits. The usual scan of a rose particularly with the OGRs (Old Garden Roses) is to scan them from the top to show the myriad of petals. This could be the equivalent of a full face, eye contact portrait of a person.

 I  decided to scan a rose, Rosa ‘Olivier Roellinger from the side. Could this be the equivalent of a profile?

Many of the people I know state that when a rose or the flower of another plant is past its glory, that the flower is dead. This set me to thinking. With species roses and other roses as soon as the rose is past its former glory it will become a rose hip (the fruit) and the rose hip will drop and the seeds inside might start a new plant.

Is a rose then dead? We must find another word. A rose bloom is transition is a boring mouthful.

I don’t know.