Light blue flowers, like velvet in the sun.

This was framed well. There are a whole bunch more flowers on the left and below, a dark plant on the right, and deep turquoise sky above. It wasn’t quite like that in reality, but I changed the color of the sky and made the flowers lighter in Photoshop, by manipulating curves on the a and b channels in the Lab colorspace.

These flowers are near bldg. 300 at Daytona State College. I had to sit near the ants on the sidewalk while pointing my camera up to get this …

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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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Sunrays 6! W00t!

Saw this outside my door, so I ran out into the street snapping pictures. It’s amazing what pops up if you watch the sky every evening. These were the most impressive beams of light and darkness I’ve seen; I didn’t even have to edit much. I did a bit of dodging and burning, and added contrast with the curves tool, but that was it.

The light is good. Let the light guide you to courageously fulfilling your dreams and aspirations. But like any good sunset, your dreams are always on the move. I know …

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I saw the golden colors flooding in through the window just a few hours ago, so I rain out and snapped this photo of the gorgeous sunset that was gracing my front yard. I haven’t seen a sunset this impressive before. The swirls of clouds were awesome, and went far above what you see in the frame. I couldn’t fit them all in even at 18mm, which is as wide as the Canon Rebel XTi kit lens would go.

I punched the contrast up in Photoshop. …

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An arrangement of beautiful pink flowers and green fern leaves with perfect lighting. All synthetic, of course. But whose to say that makes them less valuable? They sure last longer, for one thing.

Editing involved adding contrast and burning the edges. It was hard to keep the colors in gamut as these are hard to print, but I solved it by toning them down and then selectively re-adding saturation where it would turn out best.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/80, F2.8, 50mm, ISO400, 2008-07-12T10:24:02-04, 20080712-142402rxt

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

[sniplet ...

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A brilliant sunset with deep blue sunrays. Shot this through the windshield from my Grandma’s car. The colors were interesting, and the contrast and light patterns beautiful.

Editing involved noise reduction, heaps of added contrast and darkening, and lots of burning on the upper-right quadrant. Enjoy!

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/2000, F3.5, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-07-11T17:25:14-04, 20080711-212514rxt

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!

More of the Sunrays series.

A sunset near the Wal-Mart in South Daytona, Florida. I couldn’t move away to exclude the distractions, so I made them part of the scene to represent urban life. The colors and cloud dark clouds at the top drew my eye, as did the cars at the bottom. I made the tail light of a car the dot for the i in City, and the headlight the period for the X. in Richard X. Thripp. Creatively incorporating the title into the piece is nice sometimes.

I …

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I’ve been wondering what the Florida lifestyle I’ve been hearing so much about is, but I’ve found it here. You may not know it, but the Florida lifestyle involves lots of bugs. There were plenty of flies flying around as flies sometimes do, but I shooed them away to snap this shot of an orange smoothie by the pool. I went with a blue border for this photo. Never done that before, but it fits the image so well.

I added contrast, removed specks of dirt from the …

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This, following the first, is the best in the series. I got really close here, so you can see the terrifying details of the marbles. This also gives very shallow depth of field, so the ones far back become quite blurry. Turning the camera to the side is another stab at creative composition, but I mainly did it to keep the edges of the yellow table out of the frame. The blue colors in this one turned out perfect; not too dark nor …

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The definitive photo of blue marbles. These marbles are my grandmother’s, and the yellow table I arranged them on is on her veranda. I get to take creative shots of them like this, of course. The evening light was just right, and while I originally intended to focus on the first marble, having the focus on the second is more nonconforming and gives a sense of depth. I went back into Photoshop today to revamp this February 2006 piece; my editing skills have improved, so I’m finding the above …

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