"Liquid Satin" is a photo with a story.  I took this picture on a rainy February day in 2001 of a red rose in a bouquet that I bought from a scholarship fund drive for the Hillsboro Rotary Foundation.   That group really knows how to pick roses.  They lasted for weeks, and I couldn't pass up trying some pictures of them.  When I took them outside and set up the camera it was a cloudy day, often best for softening the light.  The images on the film look spectacular, but printing them in the darkroom by conventional techniques failed to show the texture of the petals since the image is such a deep red.  I almost abandoned the image, chalking it up to a common belief that rich colors cannot be photographed realistically.  But I could see the texture on the slide, so a faint hope remained that I'd find a way someday to make a print I could be proud of.  

Later that year I scanned the slide and worked on it as a project in a digital workshop with Charles Cramer.  With his help and a little of my own creativity I discovered a way to bring out the texture digitally that transformed the image and gave it the life I was seeking.  The print is now faithful to the film.  This is an advantage of digital printing techniques, and a reminder that just because we can't print something today doesn't mean it can't be done in the future.  A year after I took the picture, it is now ready to share with rose lovers everywhere.  You've got to like red, though.