I gave away about 800 four-by-six prints of my recent pictures at Daytona State College today, so if you are visiting because you received one of those, give me a shout in the comments!

While I haven’t attended the college besides online classes in a year, next year I am taking the pre-requisites for the education program, so I will be at the Daytona Beach campus four days a week. I met a lot of old friends today and am looking forward to working on DSC in Motion, the college newspaper, after being the Features Editor in fall 2009.

I got my driver’s license on Monday after having a learner’s permit for over a year, so now I can travel wherever I want in my father’s van. Previously, he would have to go with me, drive home, and come back to pick me up, which he only wanted to do if I had class, but not for meetings or socializing. The only downside to having a license is the ridiculous insurance costs, which are currently averaging to $87.26 per month for me. I’m going to try to go somewhere everyday, because if I don’t I’ve basically wasted $2.90 because that’s the daily cost of the insurance. I don’t even have collision or comprehensive coverage and I have the highest deductible, so I think $20 per month would be a much more reasonable price. We are using Response insurance, so please let me know if you know a cheaper company (Progressive quoted us at over $150 per month).

To recoup some of the costs of insurance I’ve added Infolinks to my blog, so if you see words double-underlined those are advertisements and I earn money when they are clicked on. Please don’t click on them unless you are genuinely …

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If you typed in my web address from a print I gave you at Daytona State College, make yourself known by leaving a comment here.

I’ve been giving out a lot of prints I had made in 2007 when it was very cheap. These are the ones I backprinted in the same year, with my old and very long web address, richardxthripp.richardxthripp.com, which now forwards here. At the time other family members had other subdomains and the home page was a portal, but now I have thripp.com and I’m the only one left blogging.

If you come here again, type rxthripp.com instead which I use in all new print advertisements.

Have a look around at my photos and personal development articles. Feel free to comment on anything you see with the link at the end of each post; I read and respond to everything.

The photos I’ve given out so far are Leafy Droplets on Monday, Symmetry today (Wednesday), and on Friday I’ll be giving Ketchup and Ketchup 2 out as a set. This is on the Daytona State College main campus between 10 A.M. and 2 P.M.

If you need me to take photos for you, I am offering my services at a reduced rate of $20 per hour (min. $20) with free editing and a CD. The economy is bad now so we all have to pick up the slack. I have a DSLR with two good lenses (portrait and zoom).

Enjoy and keep studying!

The shop is back. It’s a bit different now. If you can recall from a month ago, I gave up on yak because it doesn’t work with Wordpress MU. I found a plugin that does: Quick-Shop. It’s less fancy, but a lot easier to maintain. When you click “Add to Cart” on any page, you get redirected to the shopping cart, with that item added. To go back, press back in your browser (the old-fashioned way). To buy, click the PayPal button; you’ll be redirected to them so you can enter your payment info. Here’s the cart in action:

You can change quantities; just press enter to update. The red X’s remove items, and more shipping policies and such are below the form.

Since this new software has no database and keeps no inventory or shipping logic, shipping is USA only now. You can email me if you really want some prints and can’t move to my country, though. Also, you can order like 500 of a print, because there’s no stock tracking. If you do this, it’ll take me a week extra to have the copies printed.

I’ve released all of my portfolio in the shop, to start. The price is $0.95 plus $0.42 shipping per print, and the size is 4*6 for them all. I like the new software because I can put multiple items to a post, unlike with yak, and I don’t have to do tedious updating of custom fields; it’s really quick for me to add an Add to Cart button.

Unfortunately, the plugin has security issues. I tried commenting about them on the author’s site, but just got a blank screen. Here is that comment:

I’m liking this plugin a lot and am using it

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Photos in print are much harder to brand than photos on your website. If your printing in any great quantity, the tedious process of writing out your name, website, and other pertinent information on the flip side becomes insurmountable. Secondly, most photographic papers have a resin-coated backing, which stubbornly refuses any water-based inks. My methods in this article are aimed toward unframed 4*6 prints, as that’s what I deal with myself, but they can be easily applied to other formats. In fact, the fundamentals of permanence at the end are essential to any print medium.

Whether your printing photos for your friends, family, art, or business, it is doubtless that any copies floating about can make convincing advertisements. Your very livelihood is at stake; what can you do to make sure that everyone knows that you are the creator of those photographic masterpieces? Luckily, you do have options.

1. Put your name right on the front of the print, straight from the digital source files. This is an easy way to demarcate your work; you don’t have to deal with any hand writing or messy backprinting. Unfortunately, it’s a bit distracting, and anything more than the title and your name is pushing it; include your website and the text will get more attention than the photo. Plus, if you’re going to put the info anywhere, it’ll have to be at the edge of the print, perhaps in a border surrounding the image. You’re going to have to deal with the bleed edge, and it’s a pain because what looks fine on the screen will often get cut off in a borderless print. This becomes especially important if you’re out-sourcing to …

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I’ve decided, in the interest of promoting photography as an artistic medium and inspiring others with my work, to offer all of my photographic catalog for free. This is limited to twenty 4*6 prints per household, and is valid through 2008-05-31. I’ll cover the shipping (USA only).

You can add prints to your shopping cart; fill out your address and email and I’ll send them to you.

If you’re finding it too hard to choose, click below and I’ll pick for you. You’ll get the ten in the banner, plus ten others I select.

Thank you and enjoy,
Richard

2008-06-03 Update: The sale is over. Thanks everyone!

I’ve printed up and framed sixteen of my favorite photos as 8*10’s. You can buy them in the new, special photography shop for the brilliant price of $49.95 each. There is only one of each, so hurry! 2008-06-17 Update: gone now.

Speed, and Sunrays 3 are new here. I’ll have a formal release in a couple weeks, but you can check them out by those links now. 2008-06-17 Update: The shop is gone (read Everything Old is New Again), but check out Speed and Sunrays 3 anyway. and Just one week of school left to go, and then I get a week off, and then six weeks of summer pre-calculus. I’ll be presenting my photography portfolio for my black-and-white film class on May 8th at the college (The Gaze, The Rebel, Wine Bottles, and film versions of Modern Architecture and The Stuccoed House will be included). I’ll throw in a few of the new digital prints.