A beautiful golden sunset right before sundown.

I shot this right down my street. There were power lines blocking the way, so I walked in someone’s yard to cut them out of the shot. Some woman yelled “get off my property” at me as I was shooting this, so I tripped the shutter quickly and then walked off.

I put contrast at +100% in Adobe Camera Raw 5.0 and then used the curves tool to push it even further. Even though I pushed the exposure bias down to -1.33, I think I was in the wrong metering mode so the clouds in the middle are over-exposed: they are at (255,255,255) (8-bit) and there is no detail there. Nothing I can do about that… It’s not a big problem in this photo because you expect the sun to be bright.

I pushed a lot of stuff to black with the curves tool, such as the trees and houses below. They aren’t important… no reason for you to see them.

There is a lot of black and empty space in this image. You can do that. The subject does not have to be big and in the center. In fact, it’s often more interesting to make the subject small. In this case, the subject is the sunset and the periphery is the dark clouds at the top.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet efs-18-55-mm], 1/640, F7.1, 55mm, ISO100, 2009-10-10T18:33:25-04, 20091010-223325rxt

[sniplet stock-dl-text] or [sniplet ss-dl-text-lc] ([sniplet ss-dl-xti-description]).

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I shot this on an evening walk in my neighborhood. The sunset and white car paired well in my eyes.

I brightened the car and darkened the sunset in Photoshop for balance. The car was much darker than the sunset, but I was able to bring the colors out since I always shoot RAW. The files are 10MB each, which is a lot bigger than JPEGs, but it’s worth it for creative flexibility.

This was my first outing with the XTi kit lens in a long time. Because it’s EF-S and goes down to 18mm, it has a much wider field of view than my EF 28-135mm lens, which I enjoyed.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet efs-18-55-mm], 1/60, F3.5, 18mm, ISO100, 2009-10-10T18:31:03-04, 20091010-223103rxt

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Puffy clouds over a road around noon-time. I just took this through the windshield while my Dad was driving, which reduces contrast. In Photoshop I punched up the contrast while making sure not to white out the clouds.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/640, F6.3, 38mm, ISO100, 2009-10-10T16:04:22-04, 20091010-200422rxt

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Pink Flowers at Lowe’s, against a blue sky with contrails out-of-focus, sun shining down.

I debated the title for a few minutes and went with it even though the flowers don’t appear to be battling for the sun; they all have plenty of light. They’re quite tall though, which is a trait of plants in crowded areas. When a tree is surrounded by other trees, it will grow straight up to get sunlight, but a tree alone will branch out because it has plenty of light. Plants are semi-intelligent.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/500, F5.6, 135mm, ISO100, 2009-03-02T14:26:54-05, 20090302-192654rxt

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A red Hibiscus against the sun. This is an awfully gay flower so I’ve dubbed it “flaming.”

I had to remove so many dust spots from the sky. They don’t show up normally, but with a clean blue sky at 127mm and F14, they were quite prominent. They must be in the middle of my lens or on the sensor. Photoshop’s spot healing brush came in handy.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/320, F14, 127mm, ISO400, 2009-08-17T14:53:53-04, 20090817-185353rxt

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The swamps of Ormond Beach! Took this on my 18th birthday out the car window. There is water and a lot of dead grass.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/3200, F3.5, 28mm, ISO200, 2009-08-17T14:36:04-04, 20090817-183604rxt

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Graves Avenue in Deltona, FL, with a cloudy blue sky overhead and the sun reflecting off the dark road. I could tell this would make a good photo once I added contrast on the computer, so I snapped this through the windshield with the closest thing I have to a telephoto lens.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/1000, F8, 130mm, ISO100, 2009-09-06T18:42:35-04, 20090906-224235rxt

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After the sun went down, the clouds still looked great. Shot this last Friday, 2009-09-04, from the car.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/200, F3.5, 28mm, ISO800, 2009-09-04T19:40:41-04, 20090904-234041rxt

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A sunset near the dump in Orange City, FL. The clouds were quite dark with sunrays peeking through below. I think it looks nice, ominous too.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/1600, F3.5, 28mm, ISO100, 2009-08-24T18:16:07-04, 20090824-221607rxt

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Looking back at a sunset on a busy road from a moving van. The road is Nova Road in Ormond Beach, Florida (could be county or Holly Hill, not sure). The colors really caught my eye. The setting is less than ideal, but it’s the best I could muster as the sunset faded quickly.

I added a lot of contrast and some vignetting. After using curves, I toned down the saturation with the sponge manually in the areas that were too bright to print.

[sniplet canon-sd790], 1/60, F2.8, 6.2mm, ISO160, 2009-07-01T20:33:10-04, 20090702-003310rxt

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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.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/1600, F3.5, 35mm, ISO100, 2008-12-31T09:30:31-05, 20081231-143031rxt

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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 to cut off the branches at the top of the frame or else the tree wouldn’t seem complete. The branches to the left don’t matter. The trunk at the bottom-right doesn’t extend much passed the frame, but by not including its edges, the tree seems more impressive.

I converted to black and white and added a slight amount of contrast in Photoshop. No vignetting needed at the top, though I darkened the bottom corners. If you look at the source file, you’ll find it’s remarkably similar to the final. The sky really was bright like that and the tree was black against it. I shot in color mode (always do that for versatility), but the source file looks black and white because there was little color in the scene. I think I set the camera to cloudy white balance, appropriate for the bluish clouds. If it was sunny out, the neutral gray point would be closer to yellow, necessitating a lower color temperature (5200 K vs. 6000 K) to match the scene. If I shot this at tungsten white balance (3200 K), it would look really blue, but if I was under incandescent or tungsten lighting (yellow), the scene would look normal. Lower white balance temperatures are for yellow scenes, higher white balance temperatures are for blue scenes, because color temperature represents the color output of an ideal black body radiator at that temperature. 273.15 degrees Kelvin is 0 Celsius, 5200 Kelvin is 4926.85 Celsius which is 8900 degrees Fahrenheit. A black body radiator gets bluer at higher temperatures, say 7000 K, and yellower at lower temperatures, say 3200 K. When you set your camera’s white balance to 3200 K, tungsten, you’re telling it to set the color a black body radiator at 3200 K puts out as neutral gray (yellow). At 7000 K (shade), blue colors are neutral gray. So something that appears blue at 3200 K white balance will appear yellow at 7000 K white balance. An object that would appear blue at 7000 K white balance will be much bluer at 3200 K, and an object that is yellow when the camera is set to 3200 K white balance will be much more yellow when the camera is set at 7000 K white balance.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/500, F5.6, 30mm, ISO100, 2008-11-04T11:53:02-05, 20081104-165302rxt

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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 shot. I tried one with the flowers in the background, but preferred a lower angle with the clear blue sky as the setting.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/1000, F5.6, 135mm, ISO100, 2008-11-21T12:52:09-05, 20081121-175209rxt

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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, and I didn’t want to go above ISO800 to avoid too much grain, so I held the camera by hand pointing upward, really still, and fired off ten shots. This was the best one. It came out clear even though I had to use a 1/3 second shutter speed due to the darkness. The image stabilization gyroscopes in the lens helped.

Most of the leaves have fallen off this tree. Winter must be here!

Merry Christmas everyone. It’s just 34 days away.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/3, F3.5, 28mm, ISO800, 2008-11-19T18:04:58-05, 20081119-230458rxt

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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 curves in Photoshop. Even though this is at ISO100, I managed to bring out quite a bit of grain with the editing. Also, I burned in the corners and shifted the colors more toward gold and red. I’m liking this photo quite a bit.

Don’t give up on the golden highway. It’s there, waiting for you to find it. Even if you have to fabricate it.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-28-135mm], 1/1600, F5.6, 135mm, ISO100, 2008-11-05T16:54:51-05, 20081105-215451rxt

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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.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet efs-18-55-mm], 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.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet efs-18-55-mm], 1/1250, F4.5, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-08-25T11:54:20-04, 20080825-155420rxt

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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 blue sky, but it works quite well when converted to black and white. Then, I added lots of contrast. No vignetting, because it would feel contrived on this image.

Someone somewhere has done a photo just like this, but I haven’t.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet ef-50mm-114], 1/200, F2.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-09-13T07:19:31-04, 20080913-111931rxt

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Sunrays 6! W00t!

Saw this outside my door, so I ran out into the street snapping pictures. It’s amazing what pops up if you watch the sky every evening. These were the most impressive beams of light and darkness I’ve seen; I didn’t even have to edit much. I did a bit of dodging and burning, and added contrast with the curves tool, but that was it.

The light is good. Let the light guide you to courageously fulfilling your dreams and aspirations. But like any good sunset, your dreams are always on the move. I know that, because these sunrays disappeared just a few minutes after I found them.

[sniplet canon-xti], [sniplet efs-18-55-mm], 1/1600, F4, 28mm, ISO100, 2008-08-26T19:06:22-04, 20080826-230622rxt

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More of the Sunrays series.