A jar of Smucker’s Simply Fruit Blackberry Jam at Wal-Mart, with other jars behind, including some delicious strawberry jelly. I took this with my 50mm lens at F2. The background is very blurry because we are close to the jars and the lens is wide open. At the same aperture, you have a larger depth of field when the focal point is far from the lens, and a smaller depth of field when the focal point is close.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/100, F2, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-07-13T11:06:48-04, 20080713-150648rxt

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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 wrecked yellow truck. The driver claims to have suffered extensive soft tissue damage, but we all know that is just an excuse to sue.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/400, F4.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2009-01-28T15:13:14-05, 20090128-201314rxt

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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

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 crouched in the dirt below this barren winter tree, camera pointed straight up, to capture this shot. The sky was white and overcast. The tree is old and tired from all that heavy Spanish moss weighing it down.

This looks like something from a horror movie, where the tree falls on you and kills everyone… I had to be careful framing this, as there were more youthful palm trees to the left and right which I had to exclude. This is often a great perspective, and it was critical not to cut off the branches at the top of the frame or else the tree wouldn’t seem complete. The branches to the left don’t matter. The trunk at the bottom-right doesn’t extend much passed the frame, but by not including its edges, the tree seems more impressive.

I converted to black and white and added a slight amount of contrast in Photoshop. No vignetting needed at the top, though I darkened the bottom corners. If you look at the source file, you’ll find it’s remarkably similar to the final. The sky really was bright like that and the tree was black …

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In bizarro world, everything looks like this…

Alternate title: Fun at the Cemetery.

Dad and I stopped off at the cemetery to take photos. I didn’t find the tombstones as interesting as this white railing near the pond, though. From this vantage point, the center crossbeams and the beams of the railing on the other side of the walkway line up, but the ones on the left and right are divergent. An interesting effect.

The railing also appears to be slanted, or maybe I tilted the camera a little. Nothing seemed level in this cemetery. I had to watch out, because I almost fell in the water taking this.

I converted to black and white because I liked the look better. Black and white seems a lot more appealing lately.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/125, F5.6, 28mm, ISO100, 2008-11-04T11:55:00-05, 20081104-165500rxt

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.

Holes in the red-brick wall, by the theater (bldg. 220) at Daytona State College. They made the wall like this because it looks interesting.

I converted this to black and white because the color wasn’t working. The repeating pattern plays tricks on your eyes, if you look at it long enough.

For editing, all I had to do was add contrast and vignetting. The image isn’t perfectly level, but it’s as close as I could get, and I got complete holes on the sides which makes the image aesthetically stronger (because they’re dark).

Think of this wall as a thousand eyes, all staring you down…

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/640, F5, 33mm, ISO100, 2008-11-21T13:55:13-05, 20081121-185513rxt

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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 dishes are washed and the kitchen is closed. This was lit by a beautiful sunset outside my door. It was at dusk when I shot this, but I balanced the camera on the counter for a 2.5-second exposure to give the sensor enough light.

What goes on around the sunset is often a lot more interesting than the sunset itself. Or the solar eclipse, or full moon, or the big thunderstorm. Take shots of everything, or take shots of something and focus on it. Usually for me, the first shot I take of an object or scene is the best, and then it goes downhill as I tweak and experiment with different angles. So trust your instincts.

This shot is wide-angle (18mm). It seemed better than backing up and going telephoto.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 2.5″, F3.5, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-10-09T19:01:34-04, 20081009-230134rxt

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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.

Sarah (another Sarah) pretending to eat a blue light bulb. No animals were involved in the creation of that light bulb. The light bulb is a perfect vegetarian snack.

You can’t see that the light bulb is blue, because I converted this to black and white. It makes more sense that way.

Sarah has some nice teeth. Eating a light bulb is probably a bad idea, at least as far as her teeth are concerned.

If you want to be more like Sarah, read Becoming a Vegetarian.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/160, F3.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-10-01T15:55:18-04, 20081001-195518rxt

The last shot from my adventure with Sarah, and the most artsy. We went to the college theater, where they have a meshed window that makes patterns of light like this on the wall. I had her sit on the carpet so the light was right on her cheek, and told her to look down like she was thinking, and that’s how we got this.

I’m proud of her; she was quite shy and this was her first time modeling, but she let go of her shyness and let her spirit shine through. I think there’s a bit of shyness in this photo, but it works.

At first she thought she wasn’t “photogenic.” That’s a limiting belief. It’s like saying you’re not lingual or musical or logical. You are photogenic; you just have to start thinking of the camera as your friend rather than a deadly weapon.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/60, F2.5, 50mm, ISO400, 2008-10-01T13:31:17-04, 20081001-173117rxt

Looking up through a basketball hoop.

I tried thinking of a more abstract title, but nothing is better than “Basketball Hoop.” Sure, if this were a plain, ordinary photo of a basketball hoop, a creative title might add some jazz, but when the photo is creative on it’s own, a mundane title is a good contrast. A creative title would work too, but a mundane title for a creative piece is far better than an unfitting creative title.

I took this at F2.5, so even parts of the netting are out of focus. The background was a dull blue sky, but it works quite well when converted to black and white. Then, I added lots of contrast. No vignetting, because it would feel contrived on this image.

Someone somewhere has done a photo just like this, but I haven’t.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/200, F2.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-09-13T07:19:31-04, 20080913-111931rxt

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.