Category Archives: Stock Photos

Free photos by Richard X. Thripp, for manipulation, commerce, or other use.


Photo: Leafy Sunset 3

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Leafy Sunset 3 — a dark blue and pink sunset with silhouetted leaves and branches

Dark pink clouds and a blue sky, with the silhouettes of leaves and branches in the foreground. Sounds like a leafy sunset to me. The contrast and colors in the sky were beautiful; I hated the branches on the right for a while, but they seem to contain the image nicely.

I added contrast and burned in the top, so the sky goes to a frightening black. :cool:

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/52, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2006-01-16T18:02:51-05, 2006-01-16_18h02m51

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

More of the Leafy Sunset series.

Photo: Leafy Sunset 2

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Leafy Sunset 2 — yellow sunset of leaves and vines

Leaves and branches set against a dark yellow sunset. The vines may be distracting, but they have a pattern all their own, which meshes well with the colorful yet ominous sky.

Standard darkening and contrast added through curves here. I had to tone down the colors a bit, as they went out of gamut after the contrast enhancements (that happens often in RGB color spaces).

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/63, F4.7, 17.4mm, ISO64, 2006-01-13T17:40:46-05, 2006-01-13_17h40m46

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

More of the Leafy Sunset series.

Photo: Leafy Sunset

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Leafy Sunset — bright yellow leaves against a serene sunset

Yellow leaves against a blue and pink sky. This is an early piece, re-edited (January 2006). I took generic photos of the sunset, but wanted to experiment with including other elements of nature, which gave way to this. I used the flash to brighten the leaves, which also made the sunset appear darker and more vivid.

I added contrast and moved the colors from orange to pink to make this look good.
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Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/30, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO100, 2006-01-04T17:54:53-05, 2006-01-04_17h54m53

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

More of the Leafy Sunset series.

Photo: Illumination

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Illumination — a scary face lit up on black

My self portrait. Where there’s light, there’s darkness, and that darkness, surrounds me. I lit this with a bunch of cheap flashlights, using my camera’s timer. This is how I look after journeying into The Night of Eternal and Unrelenting Darkness. They’re really the same photo, if you look closely.

I removed blemishes, darkened a lot and added contrast, burned the edges of my face to make it more round, re-centered my face in the bottom-right third, and finally converted to black and white, with a bit of blue. The XY coordinate (512,332) in the above is RGB (18,16,21) now, where it should be (17,17,17) for black and white, for example. This adds subtle coldness, which is the best type, anyway.
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Canon PowerShot A620, 1/15, F2.8, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2007-01-29T17:19:17-05, 2007-01-29_22h19m14

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

Photo: Liquid Suspension

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Liquid Suspension — water droplets floating in a spider's web

Tiny raindrops, levitating in a spiderweb. Most people don’t realize it’s a spider’s web, but if you’re observant, you can figure it out from the stray dirt and threads. I shot this in January 2007 with my old Canon A620 (this is the first release here); I focused as close as it would go (one centimeter) for this, as the drops were really tiny. To increase the depth-of-field, I closed down to F7.1 (the range on the A620 is F2.8-F8). I kept taking photos after this, but disturbed the web mistakenly, causing all the drops to fall. This one, while dull at first, came to life with my editing. The reflections in the drops are my favorite element, each representing a microcosm of the world we know and love.

If you haven’t figured it out, spider webs aren’t pretty. There were pieces of dirt and dead bugs strewn in the web. My purpose as an artistic photographer is to present a realistic ideal of the world, through whatever means necessary. My job was to remove those, both from the web and the droplets’ reflections. I only did this in a couple; in the other droplets, I decided that the reflections pass for branches or leaves above or around the web. I used Adobe Photoshop CS2’s spot healing brush and clone stamp to take out the offending elements, while double checking that there were no smudge marks by making the image much darker using the Levels tool, followed by checking the integrity of the highlights. The last step was to crank the contrast into overdrive (curves), because the scene was really dull to start; it was a dreary, overcast day, after all. It all came together in the post-processing stage.
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Canon PowerShot A620, 1/320, F7.1, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2007-01-18T13:16:43-05, 2007-01-18_18h16m43

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

Photo: Speed

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Speed — speeding down a city road at night

This is the second-anniversary edition of Speed, a photo I took from the passenger’s seat of a car in motion. We were moving at 30 miles per hour, but with the one-second exposure, the center is sharp but the edges are blurred. While I posted this on deviantART back in May 2006, I’ve added nice orange text, a border, and a bit more contrast to this revised version. The street is Derbyshire Road in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The Call, an English band, put this photo on the cover of their album, Missing Pieces, from October 2007. I enjoy the songs, and though the band broke up last month (April 2008), they will be forever missed.

The photo-shoot for Speed

As you can see above, I took eight photos to get this one. All the others were blurry (camera shake), but I got the highlighted one just right by bracing the camera against the dashboard, and so it became Speed.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1″, F2.81, 5.8mm, ISO100, 2006-05-12T20:33:44-04, 2006-05-12_20h33m44

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

Photo: Fly Away

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Fly Away — an escaping balloon against an inviting sky

A helium balloon, escaping into the great blue beyond, in black and white. I got this balloon for my sixteenth birthday (2007-08-17), and by nine days later, it still was trying to get away, so I set it free and photographed it. I’ve given out print copies, but this is the first online publication. I hope you enjoy it.

I switched to black and white, cropped out tree branches that snuck into the frame, and made the sky and balloon almost black with the curves function.

[quickshop:4*6 Fly Away (lustre):price:0.95:shipping:0.45:shipping2:0.45:end]

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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/100, F16, 18mm, ISO100, 2007-08-26T14:52:54-04, 2007-08-26_18h52m54

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

Photo: The Eerie Sunset

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The Eerie Sunset — a cold evening sky

When the sun goes down, the monsters come out… This is a creepy looking sunset I saw out front of my house. I helped add to the creepiness with a cool white balance setting and boosting the blue color channel in Photoshop. The grain is there to add character.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/50, F3.5, 18mm, ISO800, 2007-08-26T19:53:31-04, 2007-08-26_23h53m31

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

Photo: The Beautiful Country

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The Beautiful Country — a cloudy blue sky over a waterfront town

A town near the sea, with a blue sky overhead, filled with clouds and chemical trails. This is at one of the most beautiful locales in Florida; Oak Hill (scroll down), where the white pelicans congregate. This shot is from the peer overlooking Goodrich’s Seafood Restaurant, which you can see at the bottom-left.

After adding contrast, gradating the sky, and darkening the corners, this became The Beautiful Country.
[quickshop:4*6 The Beautiful Country (lustre):price:0.95:shipping:0.45:shipping2:0.45:end]

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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/400, F8, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-03-05T13:41:17-05, 20080305-184117rxt

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

Photo: The Night of Eternal and Unrelenting Darkness

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darkness eternal, insurmountable and unchallenged

Every once in a great while, I create a photograph that is so provocative, so controversial in its unorthodox message, that it sends waves of shock around the world. THE NIGHT OF ETERNAL AND UNRELENTING DARKNESS does just that. I woke up at 2 A.M. with this post-modern vision, immediately going to work on the complex issues of subject matter, composition, and lighting before my dream was forever lost. It is only through my hours of toiling that this ground-breaking achievement can be the domain of all humanity. This is the bifurcation point where new splits from old, from which a whole wave of art can emerge, disrupting our predilections and engaging our senses in new and unstable ways. Can the darkness inspire you? Of course it can. The question is, are you willing to let go of what you’ve learned, to accept that which you now believe you cannot accept? If you cannot, you are the same as the lowly rat, who goes through thousands of generations, never challenging, never innovating, never evolving, never thinking. My highest hope is that you can accept and befriend the darkness, for it represents the darkness of life. The darkness which we cannot escape, the darkness which is always there no matter how we struggle to drown it in light. The darkness which represents what we do not know yet attempt to explain—the darkness which we cannot understand and yet fight so bravely to understand. To know, we must know we cannot know. To understand, we must understand we cannot understand. These are the essential principles of this photograph, THE NIGHT OF ETERNAL AND UNRELENTING DARKNESS, and I know I can pass them on to you.

I had to put all my editing skills to use here, but the end result is so worth the days of torment.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/4000, F22, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-05-05T02:55:41-04, 20080505-065541rxt

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