Merlin, our budgie, admiring himself in a shiny silver bowl. A cute shot of our favorite pet, and an entry for the birds challenge on DPChallenge.

I like how happy this shot is, even though it’s of an abandoned building. Another for DPChallenge, abandoned buildings.

An advertising style photo for the DPChallenge theme billboard.

A study in white-on-white.

This served as a light on white entry for DPChallenge.

Took a pretty high-key photo to start. Wasn’t easy to get the camera pointed at myself, so I used a bigger frame, this crop is only about a quarter of the original.

Using curves, and dodging/burning, I increased the contrast, separated the parts of the face. Using a hue/saturation layer, I colorized it slightly to a blue, dropped the saturation way down. A quick stroke for the border, and that’s all.

This was an entry for the DPChallenge theme Self Portrait III.

This is a shot of the inside of one of my hot lights. The light had just been switched off, and was fading during this one second exposure. A second hot light lit the scene from behind to give more exposure to the area surrounding the fading filament.

This was a (rather weak) entry in the DPChallenge theme Breaking New Ground.

Set up the book near a candle on a black backdrop. Using a flashlight, I painted the book to bring it into proper exposure against the bright candle. Cloned out one dust spot, curves to bring the book into balance and warm it up after the harsh flashlight light, a little dodge’n'burn on the glasses, minor USM, and the border.

This was an entry for the DPChallenge theme Low-Tech

A cute shot for the Humor II challenge at DPChallenge, just hunted around the house for something I could anthropomorphize, like this piglet stuffed-animal. And no, this is not a real Smuckers flavor!

Three glasses, three partially eaten oreos. I stuck a small straw into the base of each oreo, and then into modeling clay at the bottom of a glass. Then I filled the glasses with milk nearly to the brim, entirely covering the straws.

This setup didn’t last very long, as the oreos quickly got so soggy, they fell off the straws. A number of cookies were harmed in the shooting of this photo.

Shot handheld in natural light.

This was an entry for the Time Passing theme at DPChallenge.

An entry for the Black & White II challenge on DPChallenge. This photo is of a dried rose bouquet, my beautiful bride’s wedding bouquet, in fact. Lighting from a few sources. The B&W look was created by adding a curves layer, a desaturation layer, and a brightness/contrast layer, all in normal blending mode. The curves layer had each channel tweaked significantly to get the final result.