A photogenic toad near our house… he did not hop away even after I took this picture. As you can see from the drops on the toad and blades of grass, it had just been raining.

Happy New Year everyone! 2011 is going to be a revolutionary year.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/30, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO100, 2006-02-03T15:12:58-05, 2006-02-03_15h12m58

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

Photo of an autumn leaf with the sun as a light source. The coloring on this decaying leaf was unique. I guess it was being eaten by bacteria or something?

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/400, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2006-01-18T17:12:35-05, 2006-01-18_17h12m35

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

More of the Sunshine series.

A chunk of ice from defrosting the freezer, on a bed of autumn leaves.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/909, F4.7, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2005-12-06T15:44:54-05, 2005-12-06_15h44m54

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

The same tree from Autumn Leaves, three weeks later in November of 2005. The leaves have gotten more orange and deader!

Not to be confused with Autumnal Leaves from September of 2007.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/67, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2005-11-25T17:10:35-05, 2005-11-25_17h10m35

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

More of the Autumn Leaves series.

This dog asks the questions, “Why are you looking at me? What makes me so special?”

The correct title of this photo is Why are You Looking at Me? but the ? mark is omitted due to technical restrictions.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/30, F2.8, 5.8mm, ISO100, 2005-10-27T14:42:50-04, 2005-10-27_14h42m50

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

One of my neighbors takes his dogs for a walk every day. This is the black and brown chihuahua. I’m not sure if he was looking at me or my camera but he stayed a good distance back so I could snap his picture.

Coming out of the camera this was too dark, so I brightened the exposure in my RAW editor before importing the file into Photoshop.

Be sure to import your RAW photos into Photoshop in 16-bit color Adobe or ProPhoto RGB is you’re going to do substantial color or contrast edits. With 16 bits per channel, Photoshop has 65,536 discrete color values (2^16) to work with in each channel (red/green/blue). The standard 8 bits per channel only gives 256 discrete values (2^8), which makes color banding more likely after large edits. In Adobe Camera Raw 5.0 you can click the blue text at the bottom to change bit-depth and colorspaces.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/800, F2.8, 50mm, ISO200, 2009-10-16T16:35:58-04, 20091016-203558rxt

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

I shot this sunset from the backseat while my friend was driving. This is on West International Speedway Boulevard right near Daytona State College in Daytona Beach, Florida, USA.

On the left is the rear-view mirror and at the bottom you see the windshield wipers. That’s why I’m titling this Driving Sunset.

I cloned out a big electronic sign at the bottom-right. It was the college’s sign, but it was bright blue and annoying. You can still see the clone marks if you brighten the photo considerably, but no one will notice normally.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/500, F3.2, 50mm, ISO100, 2009-10-15T18:53:32-04, 20091015-225332rxt

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

Minnie Pearl, my uncle’s dog. She’s about 10 years old and has gone through a lot, but she is fiercely loyal. She barks at me every time I go near her. Minnie is watching her master attentively in this shot.

I took this from a distance. Since I have a Canon Rebel XTi with an APC-size sensor (1.6 crop factor), this photo has a 195mm field of view when compared to full-frame or 35mm film photography. My lens was at 122mm, according to the metadata.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/320, F5.6, 122mm, ISO800, 2009-10-10T12:55:17-04, 20091010-165517rxt

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

A pair of peaceful bongos. One has the yin-yang symbol on top. I don’t recognize the other symbol. These belong to the QUANTA 26 student Madison Bernard. He plays at the Daytona State College clock tower in the afternoon.

We had a good background with the bricks. This was meant to be an editorial photo, but I’m finding them artistic!

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/500, F3.5, 35mm, ISO100, 2009-09-02T13:08:37-04, 20090902-170837rxt

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

A mailbox someone ran over. Your dreams of regular mail delivery have now been dashed… the mailman won’t bother with this piece of junk. Buy a new mailbox!

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/1600, F2.2, 50mm, ISO100, 2009-01-28T13:45:25-05, 20090128-184525rxt

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