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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Richard's picks:

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, …

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I found this bug in our yard, hanging upside-down from a branch on a tree. He looked at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. That’s why he’s rebellious.

This is the sequel to the free stock photo, Yellow Grasshopper.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/100, F5.6, 50mm, ISO800, 2008-06-10T017:16:31-04, 20080610-211631rxt

Source image. I added contrast and burned the corners a lot to contain the creature.

Free high-res stock image.

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.

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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

Source image. Added a lot of contrast here, and brightened the sunrays …

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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.

This, following the first, is the best in the series. I got really close here, so you can see the terrifying details of the marbles. This also gives very shallow depth of field, so the ones far back become quite blurry. Turning the camera to the side is another stab at creative composition, but I mainly did it to keep the edges of the yellow table out of the frame. The blue colors in this one turned out perfect; not too dark nor …

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