Photo: The Pool at Night

The Pool at Night — light and reflections near the bright house

This is what the pool looks like… at night. Got up at 4 A.M. to shoot this during my vacation; I set the camera on the edge near the pool, dialed in a 30-second exposure, set the timer, and then waited. There were some lights on in the house on the left, which gave nice light. You can see the trees are blurred from the wind, as is the water in the pool. Ready for a swim?

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 30″, F3.5, 18mm, ISO800, 2008-06-29T03:50:44-04, 20080629-075044rxt

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Photo: Cars at Night

Cars at Night — a slick road reflecting the headlights of cars

Cars on a slick highway in the evening. I was liking how the lights were reflecting off the pavement, so I grabbed my camera to snap this from the car. 5 minutes after Ominesence, and 20 minutes before Flash in the Night.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/200, F2.2, 50mm, ISO400, 2008-06-26T17:49:53-04, 20080626-214953rxt

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Photo: Ominesence

Ominesence — a stormy, ominous sky over the sea and city

Ominesence: the state or quality of being ominous. The real word is ominousness, but I made up this alternate. This is a river and city with dark clouds overhead. The right side is bright light and good weather, though it too is broached by darkness. I took this in a moving car crossing a bridge; you can see the railing at the bottom. Used a 1/250 second shutter speed to freeze the scene, though I had to go up to ISO800 because it was so dark out.

I added contrast, darkened the dark clouds and corners, and removed a lot of noise. There were lots of markers and pylons in the river which were bugging me. I cloned all of them out. Now it looks like it should.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/250, F1.8, 50mm, ISO800, 2008-06-26T17:44:30-04, 20080626-214430rxt

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Photo: Flash in the Night

Flash in the Night — a bolt of lightning brightens the dark sky

A bolt of lightning flashes through the dark sky. This was from the storm during my vacation. My grandmother forbade me from going outside ( :neutral: ), so I shot this through the screen window. You can see the pattern of the window on the sky, though it’s out of focus. The blurred spots may have been water drops on the window. I snapped fifty photos, and was lucky enough to get this one as the lightning struck. I put some of my tips from Torrential Rain to good use.

I closed down all the way to F22 in aperture priority mode, yielding a 1.6 second shutter speed. I braced the camera against the window, and fired away. Before this, I set the exposure compensation to -2, so the lightning would not be too bright.

The source image looks brighter than it should. I purposely underexposed when shooting, so the lightning would not be too bright when it popped up. I shifted the colors to be more bluish, removed some dust spots, burned in the corners, and darkened a bit. That’s all the lightning needed!

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1.6″, F22, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-06-26T18:08:28-04, 20080626-220828rxt

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Torrential Rain

After weeks of threatening skies that produced nothing, we’re finally getting some rain in Daytona Beach, Florida (Ormond Beach actually, but they’re close). I was drenched on the way to school yesterday, and we just had quite a cloudburst at my house. Here are two photos:

One thing that you’ll find when it’s raining a lot… is that it’s hard to get a good picture! First, it’s very dark out, so motion blur becomes a big problem. Second, you’ll take lots of photos where it looks like nothing is happening! (I always do.) Just a bit of fog or a gloomy sky, instead of the big raindrops and howling winds that your eyes see.

You can only really show the wind with a motion blur shot of trees, or if there’s a tornado or tons of mist flying about. You get photos with no rain because it takes a fast shutter speed to show it, which you can’t use in the dark normally (try upping the ISO sensitivity and using a smaller f number). But I have some other tips to capture the mood:

• Over-ride the auto-metering by stopping down a bit. When you want a dark scene, the camera doesn’t know and will make everything look bright and cheery. You have to fix that yourself.

• Show puddles, big puddles. Or the raindrops hitting those puddles. Use as fast a shutter speed you can, or a slow one showing the blur of turbulent water.

• Get a shot of raindrops falling. This works best if it’s still raining and the sun has come out, because there’s plenty of light and you can easily use a fast shutter speed, like 1/2000 of a second.

• Show raindrops on a window with a dark sky behind it, from inside your house or in the car.

• Stake out a spot and take shots of cars kicking up water, like my shot, Make Waves.

• Take shots before the rain starts, like I did with The Red-Brick House. Often, the sky is beautiful and ominous, but after the rain starts falling, it turns to a boring gray mush.

• Get closer. Even if it’s blurry, snap photos of rain sweeping off roofs or draining from gutters. You’ll capture the experience of torrential rain much better than just pointing your camera into the sky.

• When it’s blue and rainy out, your camera will “fix” this by making it look a normal, warm gray. Over-ride the white balance by using the “sunny” setting (not cloudy, as that’s too warm). You’ll get more interesting, unsettling blue tones, without them being excessive.

• Protect your camera! Put a plastic bag over it, then cut a hole for the lens if you need to. If you’re particularly wealthy, you can even buy a camera rain cover (there are lots of options).

• Go to the river or ocean and take shots of all the rain hitting the blue water, or the haze off in the distance. Watch out for lightning, though.

• If you’re going to photograph lightning, set up a tripod under a roof somewhere, shooting with a thirty second exposure. You’ll need to close down the aperture as far as you can, perhaps even using a filter to keep the light under control during the lengthy exposure. Don’t trust your camera; under-expose your photos. If any lightning does turn up, the camera won’t be expecting it, so the shot will turn into an over-exposed blob if you’re listening to the meter.

Now you know what to do. Just wait for some rain, and get out there.

Photo: The Sibling Flowers

The Sibling Flowers — A red flower and a white flower together

A pair of flowers; one white, one deep red. I shot this at the garden section at Wal-Mart; the flowers were already close together, but I moved them closer. It’s a good combination. I got as close as my lens would focus to cut out the background.

I under-exposed compared to my camera’s meter on purpose, as it was blowing out the whites in the auto-exposure mode. In Photoshop, I desaturated everything, but left color in the red flower and a bit of green in the leaves. I didn’t go all the way to black and white, as I feel the green adds to the mood. Then, it was just a matter of darkening everything and adding in some contrast. I also cloned out distracting highlights at the top and burned the corners slightly.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/125, F3.5, 50mm, ISO400, 2008-05-04T18:54:55-04, 20080504-225455rxt

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Photo: Twilight Palm

Twilight Palm — a palm tree in the dark

A palm tree at dusk. Shot this while walking around the campus on break from my class in precalculus algebra. The patterns of darkness between the clouds caught my eye, so I walked far enough away so the palm tree was in the middle of the bright patch.

I went for cooler tones with this one, and added contrast without having the dark clouds go all the way black. Nothing fancy here.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/2000, F4.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-06-04T19:04:19-04, 20080604-230419rxt

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Photo: The Abandoned Baseball

The Abandoned Baseball — the game is over, and the ball forgotten

The game is over, and the ball, forgotten. I found this on the ground outside the baseball field at the park. I moved it to where the grass was more brown (no one waters it), laid in the dirt, and shot this. I used a really large aperture — F1.6, so just the front of the baseball would be in focus, but nothing else, so the subject would seem singled out. I couldn’t even go down to F1.4, because I was maxing out with a 1/4000 second shutter speed.

Fun editing here. I cloned out the sky in the back, added contrast, and darkened a lot, for a (you guessed it) dark look. Before doing this, I used highlight recovery in Adobe Camera RAW, and burned in the highlight on the ball. It was a bit over-exposed, but only a little detail is lost.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/4000, F1.6, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-06-05T16:08:38-04, 20080605-200838rxt

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Photo: Sunrays 3

Sunrays 3 — orange rays of sunshine pierce black clouds

Orange sunrays emerge from the black clouds. This is from the car like the second; we passed an open field where I had the chance to snap this. I like how the beams are shining down instead of up like you see normally, and the patterns of light and dark in the clouds and between the sunshine were quite a sight.

Added a lot of contrast here, and brightened the sunrays quite a bit, while darkening the spaces in between, to make them more compelling. I wanted the surrounding clouds and land to be black, but I was careful not to over-expose the bright clouds, so they still have detail. This is the kind of editing I enjoy; I’m glad there were no poles and trees to remove like in Pink and Purple Sunset 3. The ones in the bottom-right get to stay because I like them and they’re small.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/1000, F5.6, 55mm, ISO100, 2007-10-30T17:21:20-04, 2007-10-30_21h21m20

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

More of the Sunrays series.

Photo: Blue Marbles 6: Infinity

Blue Marbles 6: Infinity — armies of marbles converge at eternity

These marbles go to infinity, but not beyond it, because they have proper boundaries… sort of. The two rows of three marbles are diverging, though your mind has to work to decide if they are parallel or otherwise. This represents infinity because it makes you think, or so I hope. I did a lot of trials positioning the marbles; this proved to hold my interest the best. The day’s light was good, helping me to get the dramatic mix of black and blue.

I enhanced the contrast, and used Photoshop’s spot healing brush on the mess of specks that are permanently affixed to my subjects.
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Canon PowerShot A620, 1/15, F7.1, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2007-01-18T14:11:46-05, 2007-01-18_19h11m46

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

More of the Blue Marbles series.