The Rose Project v2

Ever wonder what would happen to a dozen white roses if you put dye in the water?

That was the premise behind this project. I had been told thats how you get blue roses simply take white roses and let them drink in blue water. I thought thatd make a good time-lapse video so I got all the ingredients together and got started. Well, the first attempt at this (done about two months ago and never uploaded) didnt turn out so well. For one, the dye seemed to go straight to the petal edges and then only spotted the rest. I also didnt like the composure, the set-up, and the lighting was insufficient.

For v2 I improved what I could: I added better lighting, used a black background, and went from taking a frame every 60 seconds to every 75 seconds. I could not, however, improve the way the dye fed into the flowers.

Here are the details:

Total frames: 2936*
Interval: 75 sec.
Total Span: 2 days, 13 hours, 10 minutes
Frames per second: 30, however video was later compressed to shorten and therefore youre probably seeing closer to 50 frames/second; or, to put it another way, for every 1 second of this video equates to about 1 hour of elapsed time.

Unlike v1, I let the flowers sit in normal water for the first 4 hours before adding blue dye to the water (so at about 4 seconds into this video youll see the water turn blue). Then I let the blue dye take hold over the course of the next 24 hours. To spruce things up a bit, I then added yellow dye to the mix to get you guessed it the water, and in turn, the flowers to change green.

The back portion of the video then shows the process sped up and reversed.

So, in the end, there were two flaws with this project:

1.The dye didnt provide a uniform color cast to the petals and
2.The blooms didnt provide enough movement opening up; despite asking the florist for the most tightly-wound of the batch, the roses were already mostly open and didnt move much over the course of the time-lapse.

Despite its deficiencies, I hope you find it interesting. (And if so, check out my at night
time-lapse of the stars if you havent already seen it).

Nikon D300
Nikon 18-200mm
MC-36 Multi-Function Remote Cord
Bogen - Manfrotto 190XB Tripod
486RC-2 Compact Ball Head with RC-2 Quick Release
Square Perfect SP2700 Professional Photo Umbrella Set
JPEG files sequenced with Quicktime Pro
Video editing and music processed with Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum


*I got to hand it to the Nikon Li-ion battery this is just the little one that goes into the camera body thats supplied with the camera it took nearly 3000 shots on a single charge over nearly 3 days!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• roses
• blue
• timelapse

[LightLink1992]

if I put white roses in black ink

would the edges color black?

[CaNxYoUxStoP]

What's the name of the song?

[akramul98]

Facebook Per Sonia Monica per

[akramul98]

Face book

[xClaraJaynex]

what's the music called? x

[xClaraJaynex]

i like the music what is it called? x

[Rebo8221]

im doing it now and after 3hours it has little specs of blue, it said on the internet to leave it for 12hours to 1day for true color

[lilysix]

How long until the colour started to show on the petals? my wife and I find out the sex of our baby tomorrow and plan on leaving a batch of white roses on my parents table (we are leaving town so can't tell them) and want the roses to change or show the color of the sex (blue/pink). I am hoping color shows in like 5-6 hours.

[MidnightAporia]

Split the stem and place the different ends into separate dyes.

I did this with a white carnation and turned the petals blue and red. It turned out really pretty :)

[QueenYvette]

Wooow that's amazing!!! I wonder how they do those "Tye Dye" Roses"...