Dante's Rose

My lake neighbor's name is Dante and his wife's name is Alida.  They are from Milan, Italy.  Dante is the lead engineer on the Audubon Bridge project in New Roads.  He loves to play the guitar and sing Italian love songs.  He also enjoys riding a racing bicycle and paddling a kayak to stay in shape.  His wife loves to cook homemade pasta and loves high fashion.  They are a lot of fun to be around.

Dante and Alida started a garden this year.  I never really noticed it until I came out early one morning to watch the sunrise.  I noticed a beautiful rose in Dante's garden.  It was not quite daylight yet, but I hurried to get my camera, thinking this might be my only chance to photograph the beautiful rose.  I used my 35-70mm f/2.8 at 35mm and f/8.0 at 1/250sec.  I ran the ISO way up to 5000!   The shutter speed was necessary to stop the motion of the rose in the breeze.  I used f/8.0 for greater depth of focus.  It is interesting to see just how good the D700 sensor is to produce this image at such a high ISO.   There certainly is noise, but it is acceptable in my opinion.

About an hour after taking the photo, I noticed that the rose was gone!  Dante saw the rose and cut it to give his beautiful wife.  I was glad that I had photographed it so early in the morning.

Here is the photograph...

(Click image to enlarge)

I decide to make a painting from this photograph as a challenge.  Here it is...

Always stop to smell the roses.  (Or to photograph them!)

Tony