About Richard

I’m Richard X. Thripp, and I’ve been taking photos as a hobby for the past four years. The purpose of my website is two-fold: to provide insightful and interesting articles to budding and established photographers, and to inspire my readers with my own brilliant photography. While it is pompous to call my work “brilliant,” I’ve slaved countless hours away in my work over these many years, spent thousands of dollars on cameras, lenses, digital media, paper, printers, and more, worked on assignment, and in my own direction, and have spent days tweaking my photos and learning new techniques, so I daresay it’s deserved.

I maintained an online presence at my deviantART page and gallery from 2005, but on 2007-12-23, I finally mustered the strength to set up my own website at richardxthripp.thripp.com. On 2008-04-18, I broke the ties forever. My goal for the future is for thripp.com to be a network of users and photographers, each with their own subdomain, and I will be just one like any other, hence my shying away from the root namespace. 2008-06-17 Update: It’s here and it’s the thripp.com network. It’s general-purpose rather than photography, and users get subdirectories instead of subdomains.

My site is built on a standard Wordpress installation (2008-06-17 Update: Wordpress MU now) powered by a MySQL database, with advanced features implemented by a myriad of open-source plugins. While I didn’t have to do much PHP programming, it was a challenge to edit the scripts to my liking and get them to all play nicely with each other, and the design and backend is always a work in progress.

I am sixteen years old and a student at Daytona Beach [Community] College of Daytona Beach, Florida [USA]; the youngest in my classes. In my second semester, the Spring of 2008, I continued in the venerable QUANTA learning community, took a formal photography class for the first time, and pursued my Computer Science major in the dreaded course known as trigonometry. I am studying precalculus over the summer, and will get into Calculus and Physics I in Fall 2008. I have been honored with the Florida BrightFutures Academic Scholarship Award, the James Fentress award, and the Elizabeth Barr Studio Arts scholarship, which are funding my education entirely. At home, I leech off my parents while remaining obsessed with computers.

Through 2008, you will see a shift toward portraiture in my gallery; there are plenty of interesting people to photograph in this area, and I’ve been wanting to branch out from nature photography for some time now.

I am pursuing a career as a public or academic librarian, rooted in computerization. I am working on my Associate of Arts degree in Computer Science, and will transfer to Florida State University in 2009 to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, and finally a Master’s degree in Library Science. The two fields are becoming more embedded, as computerized databases wholly replace card catalogs and other analog searching systems, so all librarians will soon need to know both fields. I have two years working experience in the Volusia County Public Library system, mostly at the Holly Hill branch, a smaller library where I get to branch off into all the different parts needed to run a library, while earning some funds for my Master’s degree. I worked at the Ormond Beach branch for a couple months; it’s much larger, and most of the staff is quite specialized–they stick to the reference desk, circulation desk, children’s area, young adults’ area, or something else, so it is entirely different from Holly Hill. I’ve begun blogging about librarianship. 2008-06-17 Update: I’ve been fired from my job.

It’s hard to find specific information, even with the Internet; we’ll need knowledgeable librarians who are experts at tracking down nuggets of wisdom even moreso in the age of Google. That is what I want to do, because it benefits so many people on a concrete level. While I’m passionate about photography, I’ve never considered it a viable career option; it’s really hard to make a living at it, and I fall short in the business side, though I’m learning. 2008-06-17 Update: I’m doing it anyway, by giving it all away and making money from ads on the site.

I was schooled at home for ten agonizing years by my painfully witty father. I learnded almost everything I know from him. Look at his website; he writes crazy comedic books and then releases them for free.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about me. If you must know what I look like, here is a self-portrait. I’m the photographer, so I have to take photos of myself, unfortunately.

New! Pay me to take pictures for you. I work in the Ormond Beach/Daytona Beach area of Florida. My fee is $79.50 hourly, and that is with extras including editing, free 4*6 copies, a CD, and reprinting rights—quite a bargain compared to most others. I have an extensive portfolio, and can cover almost any assignment or event, though my specialties are portraits and nature. Give me a call at 386-675-4472 to get in touch quickly.

To contact me, email richardxthripp@thripp.com, or go here for more options.

Thanks for visiting and reading.