Photo: The Pale House

[1]

Something about this house just doesn’t feel right. It’s got no color to it. Most things have color. The grass looks warm and inviting… but what’s with those dark clouds overhead? Such oddly shaped clouds too. Like a giant C in the sky.

This is a return to The Red-Brick House [2]… but this time the house has no color at all. Only its surroundings have that privilege, and in the warmest tones. It could be a beautiful afternoon in the country, if not for the ghost house and scary clouds.

This was quite a scene to start; I hadn’t seen a cloud formation that ominous, and it was followed by lots of rain and lightning. Once the rain started pouring, the sky went mucky gray. All the tension disappeared. That happens in most storms.

Editing on this was substantial, because it involves almost everything you see. I shifted the white balance in Adobe Camera Raw to make everything yellow, before importing the image into Photoshop. I went over the house with a desaturation brush at 100%, burned the corners in repeatedly with my pen tablet, and burned that dark line across the sky. It was there to start, but I added the curve going up to the left and around just with the burn tool.

Canon Rebel XTi [3], EFS 18-55mm [4], 1/200, F5, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-07-28T16:45:44-04, 20080728-204544rxt

Download a perfected 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, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com [8] or rxthripp.com [9]. Thanks!