Going on Vacation

Hello! If you’ve been following my Twitter updates, you know I had my final test in precalculus algebra today, got my grades back, and passed with an A. I have two months off now. I’m traveling to South Florida with my Grandma to visit family in a few minutes, and I’ll be gone till Monday (2008-06-30). I haven’t been posting as much here, as I’ve been making a lot of progress with thripp.com, but I’ll come back with some great photos and ideas for articles, plus plenty of time to execute them.

Thanks everyone, and leave me some comments to come back to. Till later. :sunglasses:

Photo: The Dead Auditorium

The Dead Auditorium — empty red chairs in a dark theater

I shot this after my cousin’s dance recital, once everyone left. It was quite dark, so I pushed it to ISO800 and went down to F1.6, taking the opportunity to use a shallow depth of field. The theater is a dead one if I’ve seen one, in this picture at least. I like the colors of the chairs, and the lighting was nice and indirect, despite the dimness.

What did I do to this? First, I cloned out the open door in the background, which was a big, white, ugly distraction. I couldn’t get the wall to look right; it looked fake and too smooth. I didn’t want to deal with it, so I just pumped up the contrast till the background went to black. An effective solution in a pinch, and it adds to the mood of… deadness. Finally, I made the colors less yellow and burned in the corners (vignetting).

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/60, F1.6, 50mm, ISO800, 2008-06-22T00:52:14-04, 20080622-005214rxt

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.