A piece of confetti I found on the street. Strangely enough, later that day I went into the used bookstore two blocks away and figured out where it came from, was all over the floor.
There's an odd story behind the reason this picture looks the way it does. Years ago there used to be a building that had beautiful artwork done across one side in spray paint that they'd change every year or two. I'm not talking about tags, I'm talking about really advanced art that must've taken years and years of practice that would use the entire side of the building. One was a centered in view of a fighter pilot in a cockpit, if I recall correctly. Eventually the city decided it was harmful and illegal, being graffiti, and made them paint over it. They painted over the bricks, I assume with a regular paint roller, leaving the paint in the cracks alone. Now it is a bland gray building with just hints like these to its past.
I'm not sure what this is from, its not at all curved so its not a bottle, but I don't know of any window around where I found it that is similar. Anyway, I used super macro. Not much editing was necessary, though I did bring down the white just a bit from some washout in the upper right corner.
A shot looking up some steps at the former Plattsburgh Air Force Base. The steps were already far underexposed by the contrast with the bright sky but they appeared much thinner. I took the selective color tool in Photoshop and chose the color black, darkened them down even further, leading to this more blunt and uniform linework.
A shot of some clover after a light rainfall. I brought out some of the reds in the few strands of dead grass in the background so the whole image wasn't green.
Just a shot of the logo on my shoes. I was playing around doing some test shots with some indoor lighting with macro, trying to get warm tones like yellow rather than just having large portions be bland or washed out.
Some glasses I found broken in a corner of the parking lot across the street from my house. No glass around, and they weren't flattened by tires.. So I have no idea how they got so bent out of shape. I moved them to the sidewalk for better texture in the foreground.
This is, again, one of my first attempts at a panoramic shot. I like this one, though, because the sun was nearly set so there wasn't much light below the dam, making it look nearly black and white while the sky was still shades of blue and pink.
The image was very very exposed, playing around with some contrast and selective color saved an image I thought was just going to end up as a test shot. Taken in the late afternoon, roughly facing the direction of the sun.
I took about 30 shots of this scene from different angles to try and get it right. I didn't notice until I got it on the computer that there was a bird in this one.
This was taken just below the dam behind the college (you can see the very bottom edge of the dam in the upper right corner). I'm pretty sure its a Great Blue Heron.
I used a shutter speed of 1/200th of a second for this one but with flame being so bright as it is I probably could've gone faster for a bit more detail. I figured having something in silhouette would add some interest to the shot so some chain that was hanging as a barrier worked well.
I'm not 100% sure what this is for. In any case, the shot was taken in the late afternoon but it was still rather bright here. I had to darken it down a lot to bring out detail of the metal (which happened to work great with the brick, gave it a cool wet feel rather than a bright washed out look) but the keyhole kept darkening right down to a black circle. It took a while but I separated a small square around the keyhole to a new layer, darkened the rest of it, flattened the image again then just used a clone stamp to fill in around the edges of the keyhole. Thankfully flat shiny steel is very forgiving. What I thought would be a ten second touch up job turned into half an hour of yelling at Photoshop.
Just something I found in cement steps hidden out by the lake. I think the unkept look of the steps (pine needles, moss) because they're so rarely used really says something.
This was taken in a parking lot next to a large puddle. I darkened it down quite a bit to add to the contrast. Doing that brought out the details of the sidewalk that were washed out before. I also use this image as the background to my phone.
This is in a local sewing shop. The light was coming in at a good angle and I thought the look on its face was a little whimsical and dreamy. The hand being broken badly.. Well, I just don't know what to say about it.
This is looking through a garage door opening of a dry cleaner in Plattsburgh, NY. It was a really hot night and the shop was closed, so there wasn't any activity or people right up front in the shop. The desk/register spot is in another door to the left, so I felt this had a bit of a unique industrial feel to it. I darkened down the image a bit, giving it a natural black border, but I kept the fluorescent light feel to it. No, that's not a person in the back, its just some machenery (several people have asked).
This was in Burlington V.T. during the Discover Jazz festival early this past summer. The guy was actually quite animated, but I was able to take a shot while the people waiting for food were just looking on while he did his work, making it look much quieter than the scene actually was.
That's a foam hot dog hat, which I think makes this photo a bit memorable.