Renaissance Still Life

This image reminds me of old still life paintings by Rembrandt or the Caravaggio. To me, the light and colours seem reminiscent of the Renaissance period.

This composite is made of three images:

		This is my starting image. I placed a fruit bowl on the floor, and draped a large piece of dark fabric over it, then I filled it with fruit. The shot was made from above, with the camera on a tripod in a completely dark room. I used a five-second exposure at F/20 and ISO 100, while I painted over the fruit with a regular flashlight to get warm tones. A LED light would have been colder.

		Last summer, I made this not-so-good photo of my rosebush after the rain. I used it to create a Ton sur Ton effect (matching tones). This layer is very subtle, and can be seen only in the larger versions, so you will need to click on the image to enlarge it. I desaturated, removed the white background, and applied parts of the image in the corners at 8% to 11% opacities.

		Finally, when I went walking in Montreal last Sunday, shooting graffiti and old gritty corners, I also made a few shots of surfaces I could use as textures for my composites. This is one of them, which gives the appearance of an old painting to the image.