I returned to the spot of Gridiron Sky for this shot. These flowers had fallen to the ground, so I picked them up and held them against the reflective building. It makes a nice background.

For editing, I darkened the sky and corners a lot, while adding color and contrast. I use an RGB working color space, so after adding contrast, the colors become over-saturated. I reduced the saturation overall then, and then used the gamut warning tool for toning down parts of the flower. It’s important that the colors look good on screen and in …

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Sarah (another Sarah) pretending to eat a blue light bulb. No animals were involved in the creation of that light bulb. The light bulb is a perfect vegetarian snack.

You can’t see that the light bulb is blue, because I converted this to black and white. It makes more sense that way.

Sarah has some nice teeth. Eating a light bulb is probably a bad idea, at least as far as her teeth are concerned.

If you want to be more like Sarah, read Becoming a Vegetarian.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/160, F3.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-10-01T15:55:18-04, 20081001-195518rxt

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The last shot from my adventure with Sarah, and the most artsy. We went to the college theater, where they have a meshed window that makes patterns of light like this on the wall. I had her sit on the carpet so the light was right on her cheek, and told her to look down like she was thinking, and that’s how we got this.

I’m proud of her; she was quite shy and this was her first time modeling, but she let go of her shyness and let her spirit shine through. I think there’s …

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This is from the photo-shoot with Sarah; we bumped into Brice from Reunion. I told them to pretend to be meeting, and Sarah hammed it up for the camera. There was no reason to pretend, because they were in fact meeting for the first time.

I wanted to make Sarah look angelic, so I brightened around her, reddened her hair, and added contrast to her eyes; it adds a lot to her personality. The last step was to add color and contrast to the brick wall. The college’s buildings make good backgrounds for photos.

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I took some photos of Sarah this week; we walked around campus and found Mr. Patrick playing guitar. He was really putting his heart in it; the song he’s singing here is Goodnight, Irene. Sarah is enjoying listening, while shyly eying the camera.

Editing on this: I added a glow effect and darkened the brick wall, especially at the corners, which keeps your eyes from darting out of the frame.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/640, F2.8, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-10-01T13:17:34-04, 20081001-171734rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

You can use the models’ likenesses for anything not defamatory. You are one of my “licencees.”

Richard's picks:

When you hide behind sunglasses, you’re hiding in plain sight!

I got Sarah from The Rebel to come back for this shot. She was out of cigarettes, so we compromised by using her neon-green sunglasses as a prop. Once again, she’s looking off-camera. I’d say she’s camera-shy if she wasn’t so good at posing.

Her t-shirt is for the Bad Religion band. I haven’t heard any of their music, but I like the name. Religion is bad if it’s dogmatic rather than being based on logical self-improvement.

I ran out of model release forms after this, …

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I think Brice and Kayla were just meeting up after a long vacation. I didn’t ask, but either way they’re a nice couple.

This isn’t a candid shot, but their smiles are authentic because I said something funny… I can’t remember what.

I let the camera auto-expose, and it was too dark, so I upped the exposure afterward in Adobe Camera Raw. Though it was bright and sunny out, there were no harsh shadows so this is still a great portrait.

Kayla looks a bit like the actress Adrienne Shelly. I don’t know who Brice looks like.

This reminds me …

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I met this girl at the college. She was studying some book about history, at least till I found her. She’s not actually studying in the photo, but it reminds me of how someone would look at you if she was busy studying. This is posed, though.

For editing, I brightened this a lot, which helps because she was dark compared to the background. Now the sky is just white. I took the lines out from under her eyes, made her lips a bit redder, and dilated and reshaped her pupils. She looks alive now. I think …

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The science building, #410 at Daytona State College. The side of the building is all clear glass in a white grid formation, but from this angle all it does is reflect the sky. It was a bright and sunny day out, and with the fluffy white clouds behind, the effect was quite charming.

I forgot my polarizing filter when shooting this, but I added the polarization effect through burning in Photoshop, so I’m including it under the polarizer tag.

Editing brought out the colors quite a bit. I added lots of contrast, burned in the sky, the …

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Looking up through a basketball hoop.

I tried thinking of a more abstract title, but nothing is better than “Basketball Hoop.” Sure, if this were a plain, ordinary photo of a basketball hoop, a creative title might add some jazz, but when the photo is creative on it’s own, a mundane title is a good contrast. A creative title would work too, but a mundane title for a creative piece is far better than an unfitting creative title.

I took this at F2.5, so even parts of the netting are out of focus. The background was a dull …

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