The prequel to Raindrops, but not as good. This is from October of 2005 (eight months earlier), same location. I couldn’t get closer to the drops because the camera I was using would not focus closer than four centimeters.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/2000, F4.7, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2005-10-02T08:59:57-04, 2005-10-02_08h59m57

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Just a typical bird drying his feathers. I don’t know anything about birds so I couldn’t tell you what kind this is.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/323, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2005-09-14T16:48:53-04, 2005-09-14_16h48m53

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A product at Wal-Mart. I think these were post-it notes on a roll but I don’t remember. I just liked the colors. They were near the frozen foods.

Any product you don’t know the name of is a “widget.”

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/100, F3.2, 50mm, ISO200, 2009-03-01T12:47:23-05, 20090301-174723rxt

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A glass rose my Grandmother found at a garage sale. Its appearance changes dramatically under different light; the highlights turn out best with bright light shining down or from the side. I think it looks great here.

I bought a new lens: a Canon EF 28-135mm F3.5-5.6. I got a good deal ($260, refurbished). It’s been a lot of fun to work with. Quite a bit heavier than the old 50mm prime, but much more versatile. I like the image stabilization gyroscopes; they really work, unlike on some cheaper cameras. I used them here to hand-hold at 105mm with a 1/30 second exposure time.

I took this ten days ago. I’ve been taking photos, but not getting back to the computer to edit them. Feeling a bit disconnected lately. I’m getting back to my art though; just touched this photo up today. It really doesn’t have that much contrast, but I added lots of contrast in Photoshop. I also did some nice vignetting with the burn tool. There was a pipe on the wall in the background, and the grooves between the bricks are blurry dark lines, but I like them.

Photography is all about light, and I …

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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 print.

This is a wide-angle shot, incidentally. 18mm on the Canon Rebel XTi kit lens.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/500, F6.3, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-09-22T11:53:02-04, 20080922-155302rxt

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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 corners, and the clouds especially. You can see the dark halo around the clouds from my use of the burn tool, but I like it so it stays. I also brightened the building, as it was a bit dim in relation to the clouds. The turquoise reflection is my favorite part.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/1250, F4.5, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-08-25T11:54:20-04, 20080825-155420rxt

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Two silver hearts. These were necklaces in the display case at Target. Don’t forget your heart. It’s better to have two, because then if you lose one you still have a back-up.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/200, F3.2, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-06-29T18:34:21-04, 20080629-223421rxt

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The hard drive that never was. Waterlogged is two years old, coming on the heels of Raindrops, but a classic nonetheless. This was the hard drive from my first computer, a budget desktop I got in 2000 (I was 9 then). In February of 2005 it failed, and I’d just left it sitting around till June of 2006 when I cracked the case open (harder than you’d think) and took this shot. The drive is a Seagate ST34311A. I was walking around the yard positioning it as a mirror, creating interesting compositions (Blend In is another), when it started raining. The hard drive got wet, and that inspired this photo. The platters make quite a mirror, making the reflections in the drops quite sharp. After drying, the mirror was covered with spots and dust I never could get off, unfortunately.

Don’t ever open your computer’s hard drive, unless it’s broke and you’ve backed up your data, or you have no hope of recovering it. The read/write head you see in the picture hovers on a cushion of air one-tenth the thickness of a hair, produced …

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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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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. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp and link here.