A windshield with raindrops, on the drive home. Behind it are some clouds and trees. I added sharpness which gives the image an edge, as do the vignetting and improved contrast. This has a slightly blue hue; I didn’t go straight to black and white as blue matches the overcast sky better.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/500, F5, 43mm, ISO100, 2008-07-11T17:45:31-04, 20080711-214531rxt

Download a perfected 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 back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

If I could just get my cat to wash the dishes and mop the floor, I’d have a cat worth millions of dollars. It doesn’t matter that you can hire someone to do the work for several dollars an hour. If the cat did it, it would be special and worth far more. Any sort of animal, for that matter.

Does that mean that the cat’s work is intrinsically more valuable than mine? Not in the slightest. In fact, it’s not as safe to have the cat do housework. Cats aren’t skillful homemakers. My cat has no proven track record, …

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Something about this house just doesn’t feel right. It’s got no color to it. Most things have color. The grass looks warm and inviting… but what’s with those dark clouds overhead? Such oddly shaped clouds too. Like a giant C in the sky.

This is a return to The Red-Brick House… but this time the house has no color at all. Only its surroundings have that privilege, and in the warmest tones. It could be a beautiful afternoon in the country, if not for the ghost house and …

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In life, it’s easy to go through a process called a series of near-hits, where you get close to the mark many times in a row without ever succeeding. An invisible wall stops you from reaching the goal, but you expend an increasing amount of effort for ever-reducing gains.

Sometimes, this is the story of a person’s whole life: a series of failures which were almost successes. “Failure,” of course, is a relative term. Perhaps he succeeded in supporting his family, but failed as a businessman. Perhaps he was a successful businessman who ignored his family. For my purposes, the shortcoming …

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I’ve disappeared for the last few days because I’ve been working on The Thripp Public Library. While I can’t open it to the public yet (Dad won’t open our house to the world), I’m working on it now because I have time off and Dad’s generously donated lots of his books. Though I wanted to use Evergreen or Koha, I picked the simple and obscure OpenBiblio as my library system, because it’s the only thing I could find that would run on shared hosting. I was disappointed by the lack of features to start, but I’m starting …

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This is what it feels like to live in the fog all the time. Took this of some green traffic lights at night. How did I get the fog? I blew on the lens, and the condensation made the photo turn out like this, no fog required.

I added a ton of contrast, burned in the sides, and switched to black and white. The added contrast amplified the noise considerably, so this is a noisy image. It works because of the lack of color, though.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, …

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The road is long and winding… don’t you just want to jump over the fence and rest a minute in the grass? Or a day, or a week, or a year? That fence is there for a reason, No matter how long you stay, you know you eventually have to travel that road.

Editing on this involved burning the road and corners considerably, then adding contrast with the curves tool.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/320, F5.6, 52mm, ISO100, 2008-07-13T12:43:32-04, 20080713-164332rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image …

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Saw this poster for Post-It Super Sticky notes at Office Depot:

Seems like a reasonable advertisement, tasteful, with examples, etc. But look closer at one of them:

“Sherri, Let’s team up for the civics report!” Since when is teaming up allowed? It would make high school and college so much easier for me.

I think this poster represents a general lost of respect for the education system… because it’s generally less deserving of respect. My Dad taught me at home, but if I went to public school I would’ve been home-schooled …

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I’m seeing bloggers in two categories:

1. Ones that stick to one subject so as not to alienate their readers. These bloggers always put their readers first, doing anything to make them happy. They keep everything short and pithy, and make five posts a day. If it’s a photography blog, three-quarters the post are about Canon and Nikon’s latest cameras and other industry news. These blogs are often have several writers, who follow rules like “use short paragraphs” and “capture the reader’s attention quickly because otherwise, it will go away.” These are clearly subject-oriented blogs. This category holds many popular and …

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Sometimes I’ll write a post, and I’ll mention something twice. Often it’s my wonderful camera, a Canon Rebel XTi. And then I wonder: should I make the text a link twice? In the Rebel XTi case, it’s a link to Amazon.com (an evil affiliate link). Sometimes, the link will be with different text, or in an entirely different context than the first, though it goes to the same page. That could be linking to Glass Drops once while talking about night photography, and then again when discussing raindrops, in the same article.

I’ve noticed other people doing this, and …

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