Photo: Illumination

Illumination — a scary face lit up on black

My self portrait. Where there’s light, there’s darkness, and that darkness, surrounds me. I lit this with a bunch of cheap flashlights, using my camera’s timer. This is how I look after journeying into The Night of Eternal and Unrelenting Darkness. They’re really the same photo, if you look closely.

I removed blemishes, darkened a lot and added contrast, burned the edges of my face to make it more round, re-centered my face in the bottom-right third, and finally converted to black and white, with a bit of blue. The XY coordinate (512,332) in the above is RGB (18,16,21) now, where it should be (17,17,17) for black and white, for example. This adds subtle coldness, which is the best type, anyway.
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Canon PowerShot A620, 1/15, F2.8, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2007-01-29T17:19:17-05, 2007-01-29_22h19m14

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Photo: Liquid Suspension

Liquid Suspension — water droplets floating in a spider's web

Tiny raindrops, levitating in a spiderweb. Most people don’t realize it’s a spider’s web, but if you’re observant, you can figure it out from the stray dirt and threads. I shot this in January 2007 with my old Canon A620 (this is the first release here); I focused as close as it would go (one centimeter) for this, as the drops were really tiny. To increase the depth-of-field, I closed down to F7.1 (the range on the A620 is F2.8-F8). I kept taking photos after this, but disturbed the web mistakenly, causing all the drops to fall. This one, while dull at first, came to life with my editing. The reflections in the drops are my favorite element, each representing a microcosm of the world we know and love.

If you haven’t figured it out, spider webs aren’t pretty. There were pieces of dirt and dead bugs strewn in the web. My purpose as an artistic photographer is to present a realistic ideal of the world, through whatever means necessary. My job was to remove those, both from the web and the droplets’ reflections. I only did this in a couple; in the other droplets, I decided that the reflections pass for branches or leaves above or around the web. I used Adobe Photoshop CS2’s spot healing brush and clone stamp to take out the offending elements, while double checking that there were no smudge marks by making the image much darker using the Levels tool, followed by checking the integrity of the highlights. The last step was to crank the contrast into overdrive (curves), because the scene was really dull to start; it was a dreary, overcast day, after all. It all came together in the post-processing stage.
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Canon PowerShot A620, 1/320, F7.1, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2007-01-18T13:16:43-05, 2007-01-18_18h16m43

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Photo: Speed

Speed — speeding down a city road at night

This is the second-anniversary edition of Speed, a photo I took from the passenger’s seat of a car in motion. We were moving at 30 miles per hour, but with the one-second exposure, the center is sharp but the edges are blurred. While I posted this on deviantART back in May 2006, I’ve added nice orange text, a border, and a bit more contrast to this revised version. The street is Derbyshire Road in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The Call, an English band, put this photo on the cover of their album, Missing Pieces, from October 2007. I enjoy the songs, and though the band broke up last month (April 2008), they will be forever missed.

The photo-shoot for Speed

As you can see above, I took eight photos to get this one. All the others were blurry (camera shake), but I got the highlighted one just right by bracing the camera against the dashboard, and so it became Speed.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1″, F2.81, 5.8mm, ISO100, 2006-05-12T20:33:44-04, 2006-05-12_20h33m44

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Photo: Fly Away

Fly Away — an escaping balloon against an inviting sky

A helium balloon, escaping into the great blue beyond, in black and white. I got this balloon for my sixteenth birthday (2007-08-17), and by nine days later, it still was trying to get away, so I set it free and photographed it. I’ve given out print copies, but this is the first online publication. I hope you enjoy it.

I switched to black and white, cropped out tree branches that snuck into the frame, and made the sky and balloon almost black with the curves function.

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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/100, F16, 18mm, ISO100, 2007-08-26T14:52:54-04, 2007-08-26_18h52m54

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Photo: The Beautiful Country

The Beautiful Country — a cloudy blue sky over a waterfront town

A town near the sea, with a blue sky overhead, filled with clouds and chemical trails. This is at one of the most beautiful locales in Florida; Oak Hill (scroll down), where the white pelicans congregate. This shot is from the peer overlooking Goodrich’s Seafood Restaurant, which you can see at the bottom-left.

After adding contrast, gradating the sky, and darkening the corners, this became The Beautiful Country.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/400, F8, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-03-05T13:41:17-05, 20080305-184117rxt

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Photo: The Coy Girl

The Coy Girl — a coquettish lady in sunglasses

A lady named Alicia, in a cute pose wearing sunglasses. This was an impromptu shoot at my college’s photography building; a white wall, wide aperture, and normal fluorescent lighting makes for a studio-like setting.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/100, F2, 50mm, ISO400, 2008-04-25T17:06:49-04, 20080425-210649rxt

Source image. I added contrast, a glow effect, improved her skin tones, and removed some blemishes. The blue clothes weren’t working out, so I changed them to golden-brown to match her hair. Using Photoshop’s color channels tool, I moved the blue and cyan selectors all the way to the right, which made the colors perfect.

Photo: Bubblegum Garden

Bubblegum Garden — shiny pink flowers against a rich blue and white sky

I went to Lowe’s flower shop and started snapping photos as I sometimes do. I used my polarizing filter to get the rich blue sky, and waited for the sun to come out (the clouds were moving) to get this shot of these pink perennials. The clouds in the background make the shot; when I got down lower and only included blue sky, the background was too dull.

Bubblegum is pink, and this photo is like bubblegum pop for me, but in a good way.

Just some color and contrast enhancements, plus a light glow effect (by duplicating the image on a new layer in Photoshop, adding a gaussian blur, then choosing soft light blending between the two).
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Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/320, F6.3, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-04-23T13:19:11-04, 20080423-171911rxt

MarioGamer99 from deviantART fiddled with the source file; here’s his creation: Luminessence.

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Photo: Modern Architecture

Modern Architecture — a diagonal of a building against an orange sky

The side of the photography building at Daytona Beach College, with my camera turned to the side. The sun was right behind the building, which provides the gradation of brightness. The structure looks like it has a chunk taken out in the middle, but that’s how they build ’em nowadays.

The orange—I made the orange, there was no orange. I added vignetting and upped the contrast. It looks good now, like a sunset or deathly blanket of clouds.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/320, F8, 22mm, ISO100, 2008-03-07T14:35:59-05, 20080307-193559rxt

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Photo: The Gaze

The Gaze — a couple looking into each others eyes

Through the eyes of love… or something like that. These are students from my college, who posed for this photograph.

Some of my classmates think they’re about to break into a fist-fight, or that she is backing away fearfully. That wasn’t my intention, but the interpretation is your call.
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Canon Elan IIe, EF 50mm 1:1.4, Kodak 125PX 35mm film, 2008-04-14, the-gaze-rxt

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You can use the model’s likeness for anything not defamatory. You are one of my “licencees.”

Photo: Crystal Rain

Crystal Rain — two blue raindrops suspended in the air

These drops are falling off my roof at my house. It was sunny out but still sprinkling. I got these two drops just as they were falling, with a nice, discreet background. The title is because they look like crystals (they’re shiny and reflective :grin: ).

I added contrast, sharpness, and color, and darkened the edges.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/4000, F5.6, 47mm, ISO400, 2008-04-05T18:20:56-04, 20080405-222056rxt

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