Having come first in Grade C in our 'Christmas' competition in January last, Catherine Millad, made it two-in-a-row by winning Grade C again in our second internal competition of the year with the simple and elegant image below. The theme was 'Curves' and this is how she made the image:

I got the idea while looking at a vase of tulips that my sister-in-law had given me and noticed the foliage had gentle curves.

I placed a tulip in a wide neck vase on the kitchen table so it was hanging horizontally allowing the flower to droop down.  The only lighting was natural sunlight coming through the glass sliding door.  The flower was positioned so that it was in direct sunlight which was a bit harsh, so I blu-tacked white translucent back drop material onto the glass to soften the light.  About 2 feet behind the flower, I placed a black velvet back drop cloth over a kitchen chair and extended it onto the table to produce the black background.

I wanted to keep the aperture small to gain maximum depth of field so I took several shots at varying shutter speeds until I was happy with the exposure.

In post processing in Photoshop, I flipped and rotated the image so the flower was standing upright.  I adjusted the tones using the Curves Tool and cloned out the edges of the vase which were visible at the bottom.

Camera: Nikon D3100
Lens: Nikkor VR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G
Aperture f/22, Shutter 1/6s, ISO 100
Shot in RAW format

ECCG 'Curves' Competition - 03/03/15
How I took that Shot - Gráinne Davies
How I took that Shot - Joe Keniry
Competition Results and 2015 League Table