When life gives you lemons… make lemonade. Shot this at Wal-Mart with my digital compact while looking for groceries. The lemons are very yellow and this probably wouldn’t print well, but it looks nice on the screen.

For editing, I used the Auto Tone function and added a little contrast. Nothing other than that. Editing does not always have to be complicated.

The stickers on the lemons say “Sunkist 4958.” Every fruit has to have a sticker now.

Canon PowerShot SD790 IS, 1/60, F2.8, 6.2mm, ISO125, 2009-12-11T15:08:50-04, 20091211-200850rxt

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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!

Amour wants to wander the world instead of being stuck in boring college courses. I wasn’t planning on using this for anything, but I love her eyes and pose because she looks innocent and curious.

There’s some guy standing in the background with a backpack, facing away. We were at a busy (sidewalk) intersection. If I asked him to move, three people would have immediately replaced him. Oh well. I think he filled in a hole because there was bright sky or a building behind him.

I brightened Amour’s eyes and darkened her pupils, cleaned her up a …

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These yellow orchids represent friendship only. I found these in someone’s front yard while going for a walk. I tried taking a picture from a high angle to just show grass in the background, but it wasn’t nearly as pretty as a flower-level shot.

There is a house behind the flowers, but it’s blurred out because I used a large aperture (F2.8). I changed the white balance to be less warm, added brightness, and sharpened on the computer, along with the standard darkening of the corners (vignetting).

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/250, F2.8, 50mm, ISO100, 2009-10-16T16:57:41-04, …

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Light-blue flowers by a rustic wooden fence. Composed using the rule of thirds!

I was having some problems with wind… the petals of the flower at the back would get blown up during a breeze which looked ugly. I pushed the petals down and snapped this quickly, while also considering composition and contrast. I had to be careful to keep the flowers from being over-exposed. Faster shutter speed or smaller aperture (higher F number) = less light.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/125, F2.8, 50mm, ISO100, 2009-10-16T16:55:37-04, 20091016-205537rxt

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!

Small blue flowers, sharply focused through a fence. The Canon EF 50mm F1.4 lens has good focus… you just have to close the aperture up a bit. I used F3.2. It’s hard to see if the image is sharp in the viewfinder. I zoom in afterward on the LCD screen and see if the subject looks sharp. The flowers weren’t extremely sharp because digital SLRs don’t sharpen much, but I sharpened this on the computer.

These flowers are behind a chain-link fence by someone’s sidewalk. If you just walk around with a camera you’ll find photo opportunities like …

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A beautiful golden sunset right before sundown.

I shot this right down my street. There were power lines blocking the way, so I walked in someone’s yard to cut them out of the shot. Some woman yelled “get off my property” at me as I was shooting this, so I tripped the shutter quickly and then walked off.

I put contrast at +100% in Adobe Camera Raw 5.0 and then used the curves tool to push it even further. Even though I pushed the exposure bias down to -1.33, I think I was in the wrong metering mode …

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Pink flowers in a garden in the trailer park near our house. I like the look of these flowers; they have a pink hue mixed with cool blue, unlike pink roses which are generally more warm. Of course this all depends on white balance and editing, but these flowers look good in cool colors while roses don’t.

“Cool” colors are bluish; “warm” colors are yellowish. This photo might be closer to neutral, but I pick warm colors over cool colors in most of my photos so it’s subjectively cool.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/30, F5.6, 135mm, ISO800, 2009-09-12T07:19:48-04, …

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I have no idea what this flower is. I photographed it on one of my morning walks. It was by the road three feet into someone’s yard.

There’s no good way to search for the name of a flower with its picture. I tried searches on Google like “white flower pink fringe long petals florida” but I had no luck at all. You practically have to be a florist to identify flowers.

So I’m titling this “Not a Daisy.” I’m not going to bother asking random friends and family if they know the name of this flower.

[sniplet ...

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This is the sequel to Complicity, a photo of two roses I took two years ago. I’ve had the title “Duplicity” in mind for months but didn’t know what to apply it to. I chose this image.

While I’ve done many photos of roses, this is from a standing level with a rose completely out of focus. The depth of field is very shallow, so the rose in the foreground overpowers the rose just two inches behind (pictured right).

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/200, F2.5, 50mm, ISO400, 2009-05-05T06:47:21-04, 20090505-104721rxt

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!

Pink Flowers at Lowe’s, against a blue sky with contrails out-of-focus, sun shining down.

I debated the title for a few minutes and went with it even though the flowers don’t appear to be battling for the sun; they all have plenty of light. They’re quite tall though, which is a trait of plants in crowded areas. When a tree is surrounded by other trees, it will grow straight up to get sunlight, but a tree alone will branch out because it has plenty of light. Plants are semi-intelligent.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/500, F5.6, 135mm, …

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