Photo: The Red-Brick House

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A house of red bricks stands alone against an impending storm. This is my neighbor’s yard; the clouds formed into an ominous circle right before the rain. The phone pole was not optional, as I couldn’t compose the frame as such while excluding it, but I’ve come to like it; its crookedness keeps the level horizon from becoming boring. I made a decision in post-processing to not give color to anything except the red house, and a tiny bit of green to the grass, which gives punch, and makes this conceptual; the house is unique and alone. Hope you enjoy it; I don’t do many landscapes, but this one I’m proud of.

This was challenging to edit; all the elements were there to start, but needed to be perfected. I burned in the clouds, telephone pole, trees, and edges of the frame, then remapped the tones through curves in the Lab color-space, including the contrast and color channels. I had problems with the shadows remaining dark-red, but corrected them by desaturating everything but the house, grass, and trees in the center. I debated placing the colors as more yellow or blue, but found this compromise to be the most natural and compelling.

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Canon Rebel XTi [3], EFS 18-55mm [4], 1/25, F3.5, 18mm, ISO400, 2008-02-26T17:55:09-05, 20080226-225509rxt

Download the high-res JPEG [5] or download the source image [6] (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License [7]. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp [8] and link here.