Tag Archives: macro


Photo: Glass Rain

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Glass Rain — torrential rain on the windshield at night, with stop lights

Torrential rain on the windshield at night, with stop lights. This is with a lot of droplets on the windshield, and traffic lights and oncoming traffic ahead. Neat patterns, the droplets made.

For editing, I darkened it all a lot, added contrast to push the whites to the limit, and desaturated a bit. Enjoy.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/400, F2, 50mm, ISO1600, 2008-07-16T22:28:56-04, 20080717-022856rxt

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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: Driving Raindrops

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Driving Raindrops — raindrops on the windshield, on a foggy morning

Raindrops on the windshield of a car, on a foggy morning. I took this while Dad was driving; you can see the headlights of oncoming cars in the background. Photos like these are why I’m glad I always am fiddling with the camera; I could just ignore them, or relegate my photography to scheduled times, but I’d miss great opportunities (The Irrationality of Apportionment).

This one did well with editing. There were specks of dirt on the windshield, but they couldn’t stay. It was bluish out, but I switched to black and white. I added contrast. I removed droplets that were ugly or distracting, while being careful to not make the clone marks visible, even if they could only be revealed through editing with levels. I did this by using the levels tool to darken the image significantly, then going back and cleaning up the parts I saw that looked spotty. That was for the streaks that were on the windshield in the bright part of the sky.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/160, F5.6, 54mm, ISO200, 2007-09-28T07:52:34-04, 2007-09-28_11h52m34

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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: Raindrops 2

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Raindrops 2 — sharp droplets, captured in motion in black and white

Raindrops coming off the roof of one of our sheds during a storm, with a background of trees and sky. This was one of the first shots I took with my Canon Rebel XTi last year; it’s so much more flexible than a point-and-shoot because you can freeze motion like this even in fairly low light. I like how the swirly drops turned out.

Same editing as Raindrops 1: added contrast and converting to black and white. No spot editing needed, which is always nice.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/4000, F4, 25mm, ISO800, 2007-08-10T15:32:14-04, 2007-08-10_19h32m14

Location: Thripp Residence, Ormond Beach, FL  32174-7227

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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.

More of the Raindrops series.

Photo: Drops of Life

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Drops of Life — water drops falling off a hand

Raindrops falling off my hand, with the high-contrast black and white effect I love. It’s my hand; I held it up so the rain water would run off it, managing the camera with the other hand (as I’m so good at). Since the sun was behind my, it made my hand a black silhouette. These droplets represent life, because hands and the human touch is the essence of life.

I added a touch of contrast, and removed the little bit of color that was there. This one was great out of camera. 1600 ISO speed, but there isn’t much noise for some reason. (Maybe because it was cool out?).

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/3200, F3.5, 18mm, ISO1600, 2007-08-31T15:47:26-04, 2007-08-31_19h47m26

Location: Thripp Residence, Ormond Beach, FL  32174-7227

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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: Waterlogged

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Waterlogged — a hard disk platter and arm, dotted with raindrops

The hard drive that never was. Waterlogged is two years old, coming on the heels of Raindrops, but a classic nonetheless. This was the hard drive from my first computer, a budget desktop I got in 2000 (I was 9 then). In February of 2005 it failed, and I’d just left it sitting around till June of 2006 when I cracked the case open (harder than you’d think) and took this shot. The drive is a Seagate ST34311A. I was walking around the yard positioning it as a mirror, creating interesting compositions (Blend In is another), when it started raining. The hard drive got wet, and that inspired this photo. The platters make quite a mirror, making the reflections in the drops quite sharp. After drying, the mirror was covered with spots and dust I never could get off, unfortunately.

Don’t ever open your computer’s hard drive, unless it’s broke and you’ve backed up your data, or you have no hope of recovering it. The read/write head you see in the picture hovers on a cushion of air one-tenth the thickness of a hair, produced by the velocity of the spinning disk(s) (7200RPM is common now). Even a speck of dust on the platter can mess up the drive and destroy your data. Hard drives are really fragile, and generally a bad way to save information, but they’re still the best thing we have to store a lot of changing data, cheaply and quickly. Back up your pictures to CDs or DVDs too, as they’re more stable.

Many hard drives have multiple platters (two to five), but this has just one. I found out the disks aren’t thick (slightly thinner than a CD, though very rigid), and they’re double sided. Underneath is another head that moves in tandem with the top one, reading and writing data to the underside. I still have pieces of this drive scattered around the house somewhere.

My finger sneaked into the frame on the top-right, darn it. Had to clone it out in Photoshop. Same for the bright edge at the bottom-left, and the silver bolt at the top, because they were too distracting. I converted to black and white and added a good bit of contrast, making the image more appealing.
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Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/139, F2.81, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2006-06-25T19:03:53-04, 2006-06-25_19h03m53

Location: Thripp Residence, Ormond Beach, FL  32174-7227

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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 Last Battle

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The Last Battle — a twig vs. the incoming black clouds

The only remaining twig, fighting the last battle against the incoming storm clouds. All the other ones have been washed away, or struck by lightning or something. I ripped this plant life off a bush of some sort in our yard (it’s a jungle out there), because it has a nice shape and pattern of leaves. It fit the bright space in the sky well, so I held it up with one hand while snapping the shot with the other.

It was a bit bluish out; I found the image worked better in black and white. I added a lot of contrast to push the branch to black and the bright parts of the sky to near white, then darkened the dark clouds to add punch. It was late, so I under-exposed to gain a fast enough shutter speed, and because I knew I wouldn’t need shadow detail anyway. That’s why the original image is dark.
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Canon PowerShot A620, 1/100, F2.8, 7.3mm, ISO100, 2007-05-13T19:56:32-04, 2007-05-13_23h56m32

Location: Thripp Residence, Ormond Beach, FL  32174-7227

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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: Barbie’s Day Out

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Barbie's Day Out — a beheaded doll

I spotted this doll’s head on the top of the grate of a storm drain. Didn’t even have to stage it. Great ideas just find me sometimes. :xx:

Canon PowerShot A620, 1/60, F2.8, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2006-10-06T17:31:41-04, 2006-10-06_17h31m41

Location: Nelson Ave., Ormond Beach, FL  32174

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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: Fatality

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Fatality — a dead cockroach

Photo of an American Cockroach, which I found on the floor in our house (we see these pretty often). I hit it a few times with a fly swatter, but then thought to put it on the counter and take a picture of it, with some food and food-related items in the background, plus the fly swatter, to make it more disturbing. On a technicality, he was still alive when I took this photo (moving his legs around a bit), but I didn’t want to hit him anymore so as not to crush him. Luckily he stayed still through the exposure, though you can see in the photo he has one of his legs up. Afterwards he had to be killed, of course. You’d think this’d be distasteful, but it just isn’t for some reason. :sunglasses:
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Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/5, F2.81, 5.8mm, ISO100, 2006-04-29T23:40:33-04, 2006-04-29_23h40m33

Location: Thripp Residence, Ormond Beach, FL  32174-7227

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Photo: The Florida Lifestyle

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The Florida Lifestyle — an orange smoothie in a tropical paradise

I’ve been wondering what the Florida lifestyle I’ve been hearing so much about is, but I’ve found it here. You may not know it, but the Florida lifestyle involves lots of bugs. There were plenty of flies flying around as flies sometimes do, but I shooed them away to snap this shot of an orange smoothie by the pool. I went with a blue border for this photo. Never done that before, but it fits the image so well.

I added contrast, removed specks of dirt from the glass, and touched up the color on the orange slice.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/2500, F3.2, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-06-28T14:16:13-04, 20080628-181613rxt

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Photo: The Rebellious Grasshopper

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The Rebellious Grasshopper — a yellow bug hanging upside-down

I found this bug in our yard, hanging upside-down from a branch on a tree. He looked at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. That’s why he’s rebellious.

This is the sequel to the free stock photo, Yellow Grasshopper.

I added contrast and burned the corners a lot to contain the creature.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/100, F5.6, 50mm, ISO800, 2008-06-10T017:16:31-04, 20080610-211631rxt

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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.