Power lines through a field of brush. It’s a jungle out there!

I added contrast and vignetting in Photoshop. This is the first photo I’ve posted in over a month; I’m glad to be back though.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/1600, F3.5, 35mm, ISO100, 2008-12-31T09:30:31-05, 20081231-143031rxt

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!

I crouched in the dirt below this barren winter tree, camera pointed straight up, to capture this shot. The sky was white and overcast. The tree is old and tired from all that heavy Spanish moss weighing it down.

This looks like something from a horror movie, where the tree falls on you and kills everyone… I had to be careful framing this, as there were more youthful palm trees to the left and right which I had to exclude. This is often a great perspective, and it was critical not …

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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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Sunset on the highway at dusk. Into the dark clouds…

The cloud formations caught my eye. There are dark clouds across the whole sky, with sunshine underneath. This was right near dusk, so I had to hold the camera still with a 1/30 second shutter speed at ISO400.

For editing, I added some contrast, darkened the corners, and toned down the clouds that were over-saturated from adding contrast in an RGB colorspace. This one is fairly grainy.

Leave me some comments, loyal readers / viewers.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/30, F4, 47mm, ISO400, 2008-11-14T17:47:49-05, 20081114-224749rxt1

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Christmas is here early! The trees are frosted with ice.

Actually, this is Daytona Beach, Florida, where it doesn’t get cold enough to frost the trees over. I saw this tree in the parking lot at the grocery store; the stark contrast with the background caught my eye. There was a streetlight right near it.

I didn’t have a tripod with me, so I had to hold the camera. The first thing I tried was setting the camera on the ground pointing upward, but I couldn’t get the right composition. My 28-135mm lens only goes down to F3.5, …

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The golden highway: International Speedway Boulevard in Daytona Beach, Florida, near the race track. I shot this through the windshield of the car from a few hundred feet away, with my lens at 135mm, the maximum telephoto. Since my camera has a 22.2×14.8mm (cropped) sensor, that’s the 35mm equivalent of 216mm.

The light around the cars struck me immediately. Shooting through a scratched windshield actually makes the scene more beautiful, because you have streaks of light and contrast around the highlights. The downside is that the photo is initially low-contrast. I cranked up the contrast with …

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The corner of the Riverside National Bank at 1060 W. International Speedway Blvd., Daytona Beach FL. It looks interesting by itself. I angled the camera and set this against a blue, cloudless region of the sky. Then, I made the sky dark and the bricks redder on the computer. Ha ha. Always have to do that sort of editing.

This was an interesting study in geometry and architecture, though I don’t think about those things at all when taking photos. I just photograph what looks unusual.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/1250, F4.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-09-25T10:13:45-04, 20080925-141345rxt

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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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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 …

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Looking up through a basketball hoop.

I tried thinking of a more abstract title, but nothing is better than “Basketball Hoop.” Sure, if this were a plain, ordinary photo of a basketball hoop, a creative title might add some jazz, but when the photo is creative on it’s own, a mundane title is a good contrast. A creative title would work too, but a mundane title for a creative piece is far better than an unfitting creative title.

I took this at F2.5, so even parts of the netting are out of focus. The background was a dull …

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