2009-12-20 Update: I now believe Jesus Christ is my personal savior, but what I’ve written below still has merit.

… 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 don’t subscribe to Christianity myself, but I see it as a largely good force in this world. People are (ideally) more generous, forgiving, and loving because of the Bible. 80% of people are like that. The other 20% use religion as an oppressive weapon. If they’re high up in the church, they stomp on other people and shun their non church-going friends. They don’t help those in need at all, yet continue asking for donations to line their pockets.

Every field has people like this. Christianity is supposed to be better, because it aspires to higher, Jesus-like perfection, but it isn’t because not everyone will reach Jesus-like levels. In theory, it could happen in this life, but in reality it won’t. It can only happen in an afterlife of some sort, where the bad ones are relegated to Hell or eternal death.

I don’t like Christianity when it brings people down. This isn’t entirely the religion’s fault; these people aren’t willing to go far on their own. But they leave important parts of their life up to the “decision” of God rather than taking …

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I’m going down a hypothetical path where abortion is ethical and just, despite knowing it isn’t. I will prove that even if my knowledge is false and abortion is ethical, one who goes down that “ethical” path reaches a dead end, the end result for which is tenfold worse than believing abortion is unethical. Finally, with plain-old logic, I’ll prove that abortion is the wrong choice either way.

Definitions

First, let’s make the definition of “fetus” really clear. The American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary defines it as this:

“In humans, the unborn young from the end of the eighth week after conception to the moment of birth.”

They say “unborn young” instead of “unborn baby.” But what is a “young”? In the American Heritage Dictionary, the only definitions of “young” as a noun are these:

1. Young persons considered as a group; youth: entertainment for the young.
2. Offspring; brood: a lioness with her young.

Young persons could be anyone up to eighteen, which is fairly broad. But we know what the lioness is with. She’s with her “young,” so she’s also with her “babies,” because the words are synonyms. Offspring and brood are both babies in their infancies. This means that fetus == unborn child, regardless of a pro or anti-abortion stance. It’s just meaningless semantics.

Now that we know that a mother carries an unborn child, we have to decide if he (or it) has human rights. And yes, I use “he” to mean he or she because I don’t use gender-neutral language.

The human rights question

There are three angles to human rights for unborn humans. They are:

1. The unborn baby has human rights regardless of his mother’s opinion.
2. The unborn baby has no human rights regardless of his mother’s opinion.
3. The unborn baby has human rights if the mother wants to keep him, but no rights …

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The purpose of any good government is to protect the lives and property of the people. Property is money. Money must be solid. It must be free, in that it is independent of the nefarious deeds of plutocrats. It doesn’t matter how much free speech or free love you have. If you have no money, you have no property, and all your “freedoms” are worthless.

The Federal Reserve, masquerading as part of our government, bails out corporations that have gotten themselves far into debt. In theory, this protects the jobs of the people, because the corporation keeps going. How does the Federal Reserve do this? They print lots more money, backed by nothing, and give it to the corporation, making up for billions of accumulated debts. How do corporations like General Motors and Bear Stearns lose so much money? By becoming unprofitable, bureaucratic failures. Companies that should go out of business are propped up by the government. Every time they do this, our currency gets closer to worthless. An invisible tax is placed on the money in your bank, because its value declines progressively.

When you prop up failures, you bring down everyone else. Small businesses that are rightfully profitable get no help, while losers are supported by the public debt. The rich get richer, the poor (us) get poorer, and the middle class disappears as we turn into Soviet Russia.

We continue creating more and more money out of thin air to fund wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, Yemen, and more, all for the continual war on “terror.” We have troops in 100 countries, spread all over the world. This is all funded by the continual whoring of our dollar. We give China I.O.U.’s in exchange for billions of dollars in goods. What’s going to happen is that we won’t be able …

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I went back to school yesterday. I’m blogging about my school life over at DaytonaState.org now, so take a look at that. The reason to split it up from here is because that site is more targeted, and ranks higher in Google and makes me more money. But I’ll be writing more here and posting a few photos this weekend. The learning is keeping me busy.

The fifth entry in the series: a burst of sunshine through the dark clouds. I like the power lines at the bottom-right… they sweep in at the right angle.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/4000, F4, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-08-11T17:21:08-04, 20080811-212108rxt

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp and link here.

More of the Sunrays series.

I saw this sunset out the window on the Granada bridge over the Halifax river in Ormond Beach. I was a passenger in the car, so I was able to snap this out the window. It was quite dark, almost night. I had to go all the way up to ISO1600 and all the way down to F1.6 to get a 1/60 shutter speed, so the full size version is quite grainy, but it seems artful.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/60, F1.6, 50mm, ISO1600, 2008-08-15T20:20:47-04, 20080816-002047rxt

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp and link here.

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 don’t have many angles to work with because of the trees in my neighbor’s yard, but this definitely works best for showing the origin of the light (at the bottom). I did most of my post-processing right in Adobe Camera Raw. To improve the look, all I did was increase the contrast and black levels, and then I added a bit more contrast with the curves tool.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/100, F4, 18mm, ISO200, 2008-08-19T20:04:27-04, 20080820-000427rxt

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp and link here.

This is my first post as a 17 year old. The pivotal birthday was 2008 August 17, a Sunday. My youth is just slipping away. I’ve written this list of seventeen things I’ve learned over the years.

1. Passion is fleeting.

I used to be fascinated with the color blue. Then when I was 6 I switched to red. Around 14 I switched back to blue again. Now I’m starting to like green (notice my website’s colors?).

Don’t count on being dedicated to writing, piano, blogging, or photography all your life. Don’t root yourself in material mediums, because it doesn’t matter what you do. What matters is how you do it, or more clearly, what purpose it is for. My purpose is to courageously inspire and facilitate the worthy endeavors of others. I’m going to have to polish that up into a mission statement someday, but it’s a good place to start. I can look at anything I do and ask “is this doing that?” If it’s not, I drop it.

2. Be humble, not because it’s safe, but because it’s courageous.

It takes courage to admit ignorance, and you will never know everything, so you should always have humility. Even if you could know everything, you should stay humble because arrogance is bad form. Let your brilliance be self-evident in your projects and by the voices of others. Oh yes, I completely contradicted this when I named my blog “Brilliant Photography.” But I remain humble in my writings (smack me upside the head if I don’t).

Don’t be humble out of fear. You know someone is humble out of fear because he abandons his humility as soon as he becomes rich or famous or college-educated. A man who is humble for safety transforms into an evil monster once he believes he is in …

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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. The camera always captures images in such a dull way, but editing restores the beauty of the scene (Being a Free Photographer).

I literally ran out of the house to catch this, and kept taking pictures afterward, though they are less impressive. You have to work very quickly to get shots of sunsets; within ten minutes it had mostly faded away. I didn’t notice it while the clouds were forming like this; they may have looked even better then.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/200, F4.5, 18mm, ISO400, 2008-08-14T20:07:55-04, 20080815-000755rxt

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp and link here.

I’ve found a powerful and time-saving technique for responding to long-winded critiques and challenges from others.

Give a short answer.

Not because a short answer is better, but because there’s no need for a long answer. A lengthy, elegant, point-by-point essay can be interesting, but it’s just more of the same because you’re engaging the criticism. That’s boring and expected. You give me any argument, and I can come up with a logical, point-by-point answer why it’s wrong. But when you fail to attempt this at all, you cut like a knife through your opponent’s inquiries. Basically, you’re saying, “your points are so pointless, they’re not even worth talking about.” There’s no need to say it so bluntly, because it’s just plain negative. A short, positive, deflective response is much better, because it has all the positive aspects of a negative response, but none of the ill will. It saves the time and energy of everyone.

This isn’t something you should do all the time. You will get great feedback and ideas occasionally, which you should not dismiss. Most often, these come not from your friends or family, but from people you don’t know. This is because strangers have a fresh, entirely unbiased interpretation of you. Unfortunately, 90% of all the criticism you receive isn’t worth a cent. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the people who say “your photography doesn’t make me think” or “anyone can do what you do, it’s all Photoshop.” I’ve gotten those comments before, and I’ve try to give an in-depth and convincing counter-argument, when really, I should be saying “Dude, you just don’t get it. I’m not making art for you.”

I’ve shared The Cancer Myth with people, and they’ve told me how I shouldn’t be pretending medical knowledge, nor supporting “treatment” that has not …

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