Sharpened pencils taped to my fingers to form deadly claws which would probably just fall off if I actually used them…

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/526, F4.7, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2006-01-26T17:25:59-05, 2006-01-26_17h25m59

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A macro of four sharpened pencils against a purple sunset. You’ve got all the essential colors here… red, purple, green, and blue.

Sharpened Pencils 1-3 are really embarrassing, so I won’t be posting them.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/2, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO250, 2006-01-18T18:22:17-05, 2006-01-18_18h22m17

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A deciduous tree against a crisp blue sky, two days before Christmas 2005.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/526, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2005-12-23T15:31:27-05, 2005-12-23_15h31m27

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Sunshine behind a pink wildflower, near a building.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/1111, F4.7, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2005-10-31T10:30:16-05, 2005-10-31_10h30m16

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A flower that looks like fireworks. I don’t know if this is pretty or terrifying. Reminds me of a hoard of fire ants… eww…

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/30, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO100, 2005-10-23T18:31:44-04, 2005-10-23_18h31m44

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Some sort of reproductive device on a plant. It’s not a pine cone but it looks like one.

According to Jessica H., this is a ginger cone of the Zingiberaceae family, which is actually an angiosperm. Pine cones are conifers which are more primitive than angiosperms.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/30, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO87, 2005-10-23T13:53:40-04, 2005-10-23_13h53m40

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Blue flowers planted in a parking lot for decoration. The colors of these flowers are far out of gamut so this photo will look bad in print.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/250, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2005-10-23T12:48:17-04, 2005-10-23_12h48m17

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I was thinking of adding a big picture of Hugh Laurie in the background… but it’s not that House. Just blue flowers with a house in the background. I think the house is for sale.

This is a weird angle. I’m not sure if it works well, but it seems different. The sky was dark as though it was going to rain. I made the colors warmer on the computer. If they’re too blue the scene feels cold. The focus is on the flowers at the back, so the ones at the bottom are blurry.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/125, F4.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2009-10-16T17:07:31-04, 20091016-210731rxt

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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 this. There is no reason to spend thousands of dollars traveling if you’re just going to photograph nature and still life. You have plenty of still life around you.

I could have got down on the ground instead of shooting the flowers from above, but the house was painted bright white. I did not want it in the frame… just other flowers, bushes, and grass.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/125, F3.2, 50mm, ISO100, 2009-10-16T16:42:25-04, 20091016-204225rxt

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My favorite color used to be blue, but red is so much more bold and eye-catching. I switched last year. Also, blue is the primary color our eyes are least sensitive to. We are most sensitive to green. Red is in-between.

This is a flower in one of the gardens on the main campus at Daytona State College. I took this during a break.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/125, F5.6, 125mm, ISO800, 2008-11-07T10:13:03-05, 20081107-151303rxt

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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.