Trying To Remember How To Photograph A Still Life

"Still Life With A Red Plant"

Hi folks, and welcome back! This weekend I decided to try my hand at something I haven't really done in probably 15 years: The Still-Life.

Now when I tried still life many years ago I didn't have access to the lighting setups I have now, but I have forgotten so much about flash photography that I spent most of this weekend trying to figure out proper exposures and how to get the flash to do what I wanted it to. I also have a video light with an optical spot which is how I got the window shadows in the background.

This was the second picture from my still-life experiment that I tried to process. The first was ok, but it was not what I was envisioning. It had a butterfly and because of the color of a butterfly, I didn't think it lent itself to black and white. Consequently, I tried to process it in color, with a brick background and it was just not working for me. I almost gave up on the whole thing but decided to try again and am much more pleased with this one. Tell me, what do you think?