Told you I had an obsession shooting candles at Churches and Monasteries:
Romanians do keep the tradition of lighting candles separated in ‘for the dead’ and ‘for the living’.
This is a way for Monasteries to make some money since they are manufacturing the candles, but mostly a good opportunity for people to act / feel concerned about their closest ones: when you light a candle you say in your head the name of the person(s) whom you light the candles for. In the case of the dead, it’s in their memory.
My Journey into the World 
It looks good but I think you overprocessed it… it’s very sharp and has tons of contrast, the light around the candles looks like it was drawn using a ruler, I don’t believe that light has sharp edges like that… because of the contrast you also lost some grey tones… The bottom of the the photo also has a lot of sharp details, they look amazing actually but it doesn’t serve the picture any justice since it’s distracting the attention from the lights…
I went for ‘just’ black and white, I intentionally lost the grays 🙂
The sharp edges of the light are obtained just from the levels and B&W settings, no selection, no burning, or anything.
One could say that ‘that is the ESSENCE of light’ 🙂
Ok. Let’s make it clear: you never shoot candles in B&W. Why?
We all know that photography is(besides art, besides the art of recording pictures, besides the ability of getting the right exposure, the right composition and the perfect lighting conditions) just a way of sending a message.
Shooting this type of candles could suggest a lot of things, like sadness, loneliness, life, DEATH, etc, but i think they all have something common: LIGHT! Candles create light! Candle light should always be warm.
This photo makes me feel cold. Looking at a postcard of a candle in a cold day will always give you that feeling of warm you need. No matter you shoot a candle on a grave it should always be warm.
But this is my opinion, I’m no professional photographer or artist(yet), but I guess that being a good photographer means being able to share with the others your ideas and your feelings.
I don’t agree with shooting a burst of 15-20 photos, choosing the right one, adjusting them in Photoshop, maybe converting it to B&W(hmm…maybe it will look nicer this way:D) and asking my self afterwards: Why did I shoot this photo? Mmm…don’t remember. 😐
Like I said, consider this a thought that came from nowhere!
I wish you all best!
I never get upset from constructive criticism, in fact that is why I allow comments and why I show my work, to get feedback :-).
However I do not agree with your point of view. I think that color can sometimes ‘steal the show’, that is distract the viewer. In those cases B&W ‘essentializes’. The original picture was all black and yellow and I just made the yellow into white. It’s not like there were all the colors of the world and I compressed them all into just 2 🙂
Mind you these are not red candles among Easter eggs or winter chocolates, these are candles that people light in the memory of their beloved dead… It’s not a candle supposed to make you warm and cosy but thoughtful. and etc.
I know exactly why I shot this photo, and I have described the reasons: I am obsessed with this shot… Each time I try a different composition.