A yellow leaf, partially eaten by bugs, lit by sunshine, floating on a background of dark green leaves, greatly out of focus.

I was walking around my yard and saw the sunshine hitting the leaf like this. It was quite dramatic because the background was so dark. I set my camera’s focus point to the center of the lens and shot this.

On the computer, I darkened the background and sharpened the leaf.

Enjoy!

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/160, F5.6, 132mm, ISO100, 2008-11-17T13:32:07-04, 20081117-183207rxt

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!

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 dishes are washed and the kitchen is closed. This was lit by a beautiful sunset outside my door. It was at dusk when I shot this, but I balanced the camera on the counter for a 2.5-second exposure to give the sensor enough light.

What goes on around the sunset is often a lot more interesting than the sunset itself. Or the solar eclipse, or full moon, or the big thunderstorm. Take shots of everything, or take shots of something and focus on it. Usually for me, the first shot I take of an object or …

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Three bottles of orange juice, lined up on the roof of a black car, with shaded trees (left) and sunny trees (right) in the background.

This was store-bought orange juice I dispersed into water bottles. Then I removed the labels from the water bottles.

I like this composition… the colors, shapes of the bottles, lighting, and spacing came together that day. I made the colors warmer in Photoshop, brightened the bottles, darkened the edges. It’s a lot more idealistic.

The bokeh highlights in the background are eight-sided because my 50mm lens has eight uncurved aperture blades. …

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Shaun & Krystal, pretending to study calculus. All the numbers are making sense.

I did editing in the Lab color space, which separates luminance from color, to make them look yellow instead of blue. I could’ve done the same with a cloudy sky, but I can’t control the weather (yet…).

This was around noon at the college. I found Krystal smoking with a group of friends, and paired her up with this guy who was really studying. She’s still holding a cigarette in her hand, you can see on the right. Smoking is as popular as …

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A car with yellow headlights illuminates the road on a dark, cloudy evening.

This car had lights that were unusually colored. I bet they had a yellow filter over them, but they looked brighter than normal too.

For editing, I decided to go with really warm colors, much more so than the actual scene. It gives a better mood than bluish tones. Also, I dodged the ground to make it look like the headlights are brighter, while adding contrast and burning the corners to make the scene more eye-catching. Because I shot this at ISO400, I brought …

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… or I’ll cross you right back! Not really, but that’s the best title I can think of for this photo. It’s a church at sunrise, with the ever-wonderful cross towering above.

I edited this in Adobe Camera Raw 4.0 exclusively. Here are the settings I used:

I thought about going for cool, bluish tones in the sky, but the golden yellows work better. As you can see, I added contrast and blackness too, to make sure the cross and building really is a silhouette.

I …

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This beautiful sunset caught my eye out the window. The skies here are just getting better and better. I ran out with my wide-angle lens (the kit lens) and started snapping different angles of it. It didn’t look like this to start, but I stuck around for ten minutes and the clouds came together in this odd formation. It looks like cotton candy, caramel flavored. I found it really interesting that the sun was like a spotlight, because it was dark outside of the clouds as you can see at the edges of this photo.

I …

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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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Something about this house just doesn’t feel right. It’s got no color to it. Most things have color. The grass looks warm and inviting… but what’s with those dark clouds overhead? Such oddly shaped clouds too. Like a giant C in the sky.

This is a return to The Red-Brick House… but this time the house has no color at all. Only its surroundings have that privilege, and in the warmest tones. It could be a beautiful afternoon in the country, if not for the ghost house and …

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