I found this red ornament on the ground while walking with my camera, and was inspired to set it on a nearby tree branch and reach my hand out as a reflection. The ornament represents your dreams, and the hand represents your continued pursuit of them. Don’t give up!

For this, I brightened the ornament while darkening my fingers, added contrast, a blurry glow effect, and stripped the background down to black and white (selective color).

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/80, F5.6, 55mm, ISO400, 2008-05-12T19:06:17-04, 20080512-230617rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or [sniplet …

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I’ve slaved hours away on Thripp.com: the blogging network, and it’s now open in a public beta. Sign up for your spot now. This is great step forward for social blogging, and you can take advantage of the same great scripts I use to multicast this blog to LiveJournal and Xanga. Read on . . .

I wrote this two days ago, but didn’t expect to get rolling so quickly:

People have been signing up for Thripp.com despite my lack of advertising. I’ll work on the layout and features in July. I can’t get

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2008-07-20 Update: They upgraded the site and broke the old URLs! Here’s my new Gawker Artists page.

I have a page on Gawker Artists now. The photo that got me in is The Rebel, one of my favorite portraits, taken for my now-concluded black and white film class. This means the image will appear occasionally on Lifehacker and other exhibitors. Quite cool. Sarah will be proud, if she checks here. She’s representing an entire movement of non-conformity.

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This is a brave rose, because she’s trapped behind a chain-link fence. I went out for a walk with my camera this morning and spotted this; the rose was right near the fence, so I moved it to be peeking through one of the diamonds. The background was a house and the rest of the fence, but I opened up to F2.5 to blur it almost completely, keeping your focus on the flower.

By only leaving color in the red channel, everything else …

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Photos in print are much harder to brand than photos on your website. If your printing in any great quantity, the tedious process of writing out your name, website, and other pertinent information on the flip side becomes insurmountable. Secondly, most photographic papers have a resin-coated backing, which stubbornly refuses any water-based inks. My methods in this article are aimed toward unframed 4*6 prints, as that’s what I deal with myself, but they can be easily applied to other …

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I was looking for ways to optimize my website . . . to make it quicker and easier for me to maintain and update, while being fun to browse for my visitors. The problem with the old gallery and random photos at the top of each page, was that I had to make the thumbnails and update the page and database for both (I was using the this randomizer plugin for Wordpress), each time I added a photo. It was good because I’d crop, scale down, and sharpen each image to look its best, but the extra work …

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Orange sunrays emerge from the black clouds. This is from the car like the second; we passed an open field where I had the chance to snap this. I like how the beams are shining down instead of up like you see normally, and the patterns of light and dark in the clouds and between the sunshine were quite a sight.

Added a lot of contrast here, and brightened the sunrays quite a bit, while darkening the spaces in between, to make them more compelling. I wanted the …

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An awesome blue sunset. I saw this while my Dad was driving, so I started snapping photos with a fast shutter speed out the window. By luck, I got the timing just right on this frame, including an interesting white fence and some nice palm trees.

I wanted the fence to stand out, as it matched the white rays well, so I dodged it in Photoshop. Then, I added color and contrast with the curves function, and brightened the sunrays. To color the text with the title and my …

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With the addition of Blue Marbles, I’ve now posted my complete photography portfolio here—a collection of thirty of my best works. Check it out here: richardxthripp.thripp.com/portfolio.

It’s on Digg too; you can vote for it to help get the word out.

Thanks!
Richard

These marbles go to infinity, but not beyond it, because they have proper boundaries… sort of. The two rows of three marbles are diverging, though your mind has to work to decide if they are parallel or otherwise. This represents infinity because it makes you think, or so I hope. I did a lot of trials positioning the marbles; this proved to hold my interest the best. The day’s light was good, helping me to get the dramatic mix of black and blue.

I enhanced the contrast, and …

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