Inspiration 

The Rose collection is dedicated to the women in my life. My wife. Ashleigh😍 and my mama, Linda Brown. The Rose pictures are always their favorite because they both like to keep flowers in the house. Me and Mom always talk about different flowers. We both like orchids but wish they’d stay alive all year. She likes flowers that she can have for a while. Me on the other hand, I like roses. Ash made me like roses honestly. She loves a good surprise Rose situation and we like to keep em on rotation once a week or two at home. So in going to get them every week, I really started liking different colors and variations and combos. So since ima Konnoisseur (iykyk), here I am mastering flowers. It’s really crazy when you think about how many variations of flowers exist. There are literally flowers for every person and for every situation. As a photographer, I’ve also learned to appreciate flowers because they’re great complements to any scene and can really help fill up your composition. They’re also really easy to stage. They don’t have faces and they don’t have to pose, so they’re a lot easier than shooting people. I’m still getting my feet wet when it comes to shooting models and helping people pose for pictures, but objects that I can manipulate and place how I want to are easy-peasy. 

Flowers hold power too. Flowers hold the power to improve moods, put smiles on faces, and even make a room smell fresh and fragrant. The song says roses really smell like booboo, but this isn’t true of all roses. A rose can give you a great feeling, and actually encourages you to breathe deeply and slowly, taking in the moment and the smell that can mesmerize. Roses can smell like a smile, smell like forgiveness in some cases, and overall just smell like something that you don’t get to experience all day every day. When your wife comes home to a bouquet of roses, they look good, but they also smell good because she either isn’t expecting them or she’s happy you bought them for her. I encourage all the husbands and boyfriends to not only buy your woman roses on holidays and when you’ve made her mad. Sometimes just do it because you know she’ll appreciate it. And if she doesn’t like roses, figure out what type of flowers she does like. A bouquet of flowers brings life to any situation and can also bring life to your home. Sometimes you don’t need a canvas(although you should buy one from Wake Up Optics) to decorate your home. Sometimes, all you need is fresh flowers. 

Andre 3000 once said “Lean a little bit closer, see the roses really smell like boo-boo.” Sometimes the things that are dressed up the most and have superior appearance, are actually hollow, or even rank. Often times, we look at other people’s situations and compare them to ours, based on how they appear. But if we really knew what some people go through to keep up appearances, we’d know that it’s important to check ourselves and make sure we aren’t trying to live up to expectations that someone else has set for their life or the blessings that are granted to them. We are all blessed with talents, abilities, attributes and so on. So don’t be like Caroline from the popular song, Roses. Caroline was a nice looking girl with a stank attitude, because she felt like she had more worth than those around her. Everyone in the video was fighting over Caroline, trying to have the nicest looking, sweetest girl, when there were probably some concrete roses around that had much stronger personalities and empathy for others. Sometimes we look for the things that will make us look the best, or that have perceived worth, when really we need to be looking deep inside and seeing who people really are, without the makeup and the nice clothes. This goes for people, but it also goes for life. A lot of times we get caught up in other people’s lives, wanting to have a lifestyle that’s perceived to be great by others. We post on Instagram and other social platforms, checking how many likes and comments we get, trying to find worth in society. But really we should be living a lifestyle that has worth and brings us real life joy and happiness. And sometimes real life worth doesn’t translate to social media. We have to remember that our value is found in our life experiences and the real connections we make with people.