Labor of Love

I don't normally spend much time, if any, modifying my photographs other than cropping, sharpening and the occasional tweaking of its over/under exposed parts.
Today was an exception.
I have been photographing Margaret's flowers and I remembered an exhibition we had seen many years ago at the Royal Ontario Museum. It was 18th century water colors of many plants that were found in Canada at that time. Of course the paint itself has started to fade and the texture of the paper was beginning to show. I thought this added a certain something to the fact that they had been painstakingly painted in 1750.
So I set out to try and replicate the effect as I recall it for this hyacinthus transcaspicus kinka { ok I looked it up, but just wanted to add an air of authenticity :-)) }
I shot the original photograph in the studio on a continuous white background with 2 x 5 bulb cold lights inside 2 x 24 inch soft boxes at full power. I'm still groping around half blind as a result.
Next I processed it using Nikon's ColorFXPro to get the shading I wanted and finally replicated a Kodak 35mm Portra 400VC film.
Then applied a medium grain level on a simulated rough light grey matte paper.
This is the result.

douglas