Autumn Still Life With Brassica And Rose Hip

I have struggled a bit with my autumn still life this year. There is so much to choose from in terms of props, and maybe that is why it can be difficult to come up with an interesting composition that works well. My heart was set on using brassica, a cabbage-like plant that appears at florists and supermarkets at this time of year. My first instinct was to photograph it in a vase, but it just didn't look right and it was hard to team up with anything else. I decided to cut the thick stalks short and lay the flowers down facing the camera. There are brassicas with different colour centres - cream. pink, purple....I chose purple ones to add a new colour to the colourful autumn set up.
When I think of autumn things to include in a still life image red berries always come to my mind first. They are pretty, simple, but striking too, and they will go with virtually anything else. I found these lovely rose-hips, the type I have not used before, in the local Aldi, and used them as a "link" between the other elements of the image.

I know that simplicity always works a treat, but I am a lover and emulator of classic, old masters still life, and usually lean towards using at least three, often more elements in my images. Here I went for my green vintage outdoor oil lamp, a relatively new acquisition that I have not used before. I like to use lamps in autumn still lifes because they evoke the sense of nights drawing in, and look nostalgic just like autumn does in my opinion.
There is also a red pomegranate that echos the colour of the rose-hip; and a persimmon fruit adding yellow - autumn's prime colour, its leafy calyx kind of mirroring the brassica leaves.
The textures I used in postprocessing are Jessica Drossin's Wuthering Heights textures, the only textures I have been working with lately.