Tag Archives: conceptual


Photo: The Brave Rose

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The Brave Rose — a pink rose trapped by a chain-link fence

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 went black and white. I used subtle coloring on the rose, a glow effect, and added plenty of contrast. To balance the frame and draw the eye toward the center, I darkened everything else with the burn tool, especially toward the edges. This is a good example of how editing can produce a mood, the mood here being one of sadness and reflection, not only from the rose being behind the fence, but from the dark feel I added, and by alienating the subject from its surroundings with selective coloring.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/100, F2.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-05-17T06:47:05-04, 20080517-104705rxt

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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: 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: 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.

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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: Modern Architecture

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Modern Architecture — a diagonal of a building against an orange sky

The side of the photography building at Daytona Beach College, with my camera turned to the side. The sun was right behind the building, which provides the gradation of brightness. The structure looks like it has a chunk taken out in the middle, but that’s how they build ’em nowadays.

The orange—I made the orange, there was no orange. I added vignetting and upped the contrast. It looks good now, like a sunset or deathly blanket of clouds.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/320, F8, 22mm, ISO100, 2008-03-07T14:35:59-05, 20080307-193559rxt

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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: Rose of Purity

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Rose of Purity — an isolated white rose

A white rose, floating on a background of white. I was going to have the backdrop as a bunch of other flowers, but decided to do something different. This is from my induction into Phi Theta Kappa; white represents purity (and black impurity?).

I was working in poor light for this, so I pumped up my camera’s sensor to ISO1600. The rose is very grainy, which serves as a conceptual counterpoint to the ideal of the title. You can see my idea (of the rose being the odd one out among the other flowers), but I abandoned that and instead made it the only item on a white canvas, in an almost creepy way (does the lack of boundaries scare you?).

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/80, F2, 50mm, ISO1600, 2008-04-19T20:06:38-04, 20080420-000638rxt

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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.

Looking for more stock roses? Try these: Simplicity (pink), Implicity (yellow), Complicity (pink x2), and Rose of Orange.

Photo: Night Meets Day

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Night Meets Day — sunlit leaves against a moonlit sky

Leaves from the American sycamore tree in my yard. This photo is with my new polarizing filter; I made the sky look as dark as possible with it, and put the moon in the frame to make the scene a cross between night and day. So the moon didn’t become a blurry white blob, I closed down to F18, so I increased the ISO speed to 800, but the grain works well here. So you have the sunshine of late afternoon, but the dark blue sky of a moonlit night.

Though the polarizer took care of making the sky dark, I added some contrast, toned down the colors of the leaves, and added heavy vignetting (darkening at the corners), to keep your eyes from wandering off the edge. I also brightened the moon a bit.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/50, F18, 50mm, ISO800, 2008-04-11T18:15:36-04, 20080411-221536rxt

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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: Bubble in the Sea

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Bubble in the Sea — an ant, trapped underwater in an air bubble

These are some Loquat fruits that my Dad was washing off (for their cancer-fighting properties). When I looked at them, I saw this going on: an ant, trapped in an air bubble, with another ant outside the bubble, already drowned. The ant in the bubble was moving around, trying to escape. I ran to get my camera; used my small digicam, as it focuses this close while the lenses I have for my DSLR won’t, and captured this scene.

Ants are people too! Actually, they aren’t. They type here is red imported fire ant, which we have far too many of in Central Florida.

I removed some specks of dirt (can’t have dirt on my fruit), plus added contrast to liven things up. I burned in the corners slightly, and dodged the blue areas so they can better play off the yellow and orange bits.
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Canon PowerShot A620, 1/2, F2.8, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2008-03-18T15:52:18-04, 20080318-195218rxt

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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: Assimilation

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Assimilation — a lone red leaf in a sea of death

A bright-red leaf out-of-place in a field of sickly brown leaves. I happened upon this idea as I saw a red leaf amongst all the brown leaves in our yard, so then I went and found a better leaf and positioned it like this. It was rainy and overcast, so the lighting was lower contrast and a bit blue, which is fitting for this image.

This didn’t need much spot editing, but it did benefit from added contrast and a shift to cooler colors. I added red to the leaf and desaturated the background (just a tad) to make it stand out more.
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Canon PowerShot A620, 1/10, F7.1, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2007-01-08T14:07:05-05, 2007-01-08_19h07m05b

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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 Stuccoed House

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The Stuccoed House — a lit, yellow home at night, with three ghosts

A thirty-second exposure of my house at night, with the lights on. Our house has creatively applied stucco that is painted yellow, so it makes an interesting and reflective texture, particularly with the yellowish indoor lights. The ghostly figures are of me standing next to two windows and in the light behind the house; I stood still in each spot for eight seconds to achieve the effect (took four tries). I don’t own a proper tripod, so I used a step-ladder; it does well in a pinch.

For the glowing effect, I used a gaussian-blurred layer with soft-light blending in Adobe Photoshop CS3. Other than that, I added contrast and color, burned the sky, and dodged the ghosts.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 30″, F3.5, 18mm, ISO400, 2008-03-22T22:11:14-04, 20080323-021114rxt

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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.