The inside of the grand cathedral of Notre Dame is a great place for HDR. Normally, I don’t like getting other people in the shot, but sometimes, it’s unavoidable. So, since I use a tripod, I don’t mind a bit of motion here and there… seems to give the place a sense of movement and life. Being in a big Catholic church also reminds me of the four years of Latin I had to take at my Jesuit high school back in the day. If you guys ever want to hear a dead language, just let me know!

In other news, I am collecting a few ideas for Twitter or Facebook contests that you have seen in the past. The publisher (Peachpit) and I are poking around for some of the best and most successful ideas for book giveaways when it is released. Frankly, I don’t want any of those brash contests that are “My 10,000th Follower gets a Free Book!” or “Retweet this 20 times to win!” — none of that nonsense. I want something that is fun, engaging, and works! Any and all ideas are welcome! You can send them here or via Twitter.

Filed under the categories: France, Paris, Travel

First, a little update on “Connecting the Community”. Thanks to the new Twitter Lists, I put together the first 150 people or so that signed up… I’ll add more later. You can see the Stuck In Customs Twitter Community list here. It’s a great way to get started… just go through and follow those people, and you’ll be off and running! Now, if Tweetdeck will just let us auto-import a Twitter list and make it a column, that would be great! (if you want to add your name, add it to this thread and I will update the Twitter List later!)

Second, we are announcing the print that will be coming with the Premium package of my upcoming book about HDR. These will all be Limited Edition, Numbered series, and autographed prints. That is, after we stop taking pre-orders, we will stop the number and that will be that. It is a 9″x9″ print, and we have just gone through a selection process, where we had samples sent to us from different printing companies (you can see a bad iPhone shot of the selection process here). We’ve chosen the finest quality.  These will all be collector’s items, and normally we would sell these prints for over $100 each, so it’s quite a deal!

As you can tell from the pricing, I’m not in this to make a killing on the unit cost! I wanted to reward fans and friends with something special for being some of the early believers. I’m kind of a softie, frankly… and I have such a friendly relation with y’all – I feel strange charging you a lot of money!  I think this evolving artform is just fantastic, and I do all of this for the pure joy of it.

The print is called “The Lonely Road to the Dinosaur Dig”. It was taken one evening in northern Montana near the Canadian border. I was on a dinosaur dig with Jack Horner and had taken an ATV out on a joy ride one night. It unceremoniously caught on fire, and left me stranded a long way from home with just my camera and the sunset.

Filed under the categories: Travel

This was a hard spot to reach!

It was quite a hike to get up here early in the morning, just as the sky was still in a dawn of deep blue. The two lakes on either side are those pure glacial blue lakes that you sometimes see from airplanes and wonder, “What’s it like to be down there?” I’ll tell ya – AWESOME! I went down there and drank from the lakes like a guanaco on holiday. It was incredible.

Now, a few days ago I started to “Connect the Community“. There are so many clever and interesting people in the community, and I thought you should meet on another! Anyway, it’s really taken off and people from the community are taking it in nice new directions – thanks!

It seems a great many of you are on Twitter, and many of us have created a “Stuck In Customs” group in Tweetdeck or Lists in Twitter. This enables me to sit there and watch/engage in a real-time stream of community activity. It’s cool! I updated that post with a 4-step guide on the creation of this real-time community. It’s very loosey-goosey… as any fun community is! Come in, engage, stay a while… drift off… create… come back and share… drift off… comon back… it’s good and natural!

(and our experiment with a Real-Time Community continues…)

Filed under the categories: Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

I felt lucky to have a wild sunset in Yellowstone! I’ve probably been to Yellowstone 5 or 6 times, and you never know what you’ll get! This night was perfect… I had woken up early, so I was tired by mid-afternoon.. I took a catnap in my car and woke up to see the sun was going down in less than an hour! So, I looked at my map and figured out some good spots to go. While walking down this little dirt road, I thought the sky was too perfect to ignore, so I set up for a quick shot!

Also, I got a note from Patrick at onOne software. Their new Plugin Suite 5 is avail! Cool! I use their plugins a lot with my photos. Although I haven’t done a full review, I did review Genuine Fractals, which is part of their suite. I understand that the “STUCKINCUSTOMS” code will save you 20% on all their products. Whenever I have time to write the full review, I will!

Filed under the categories: Montana, Travel, Wyoming, Yellowstone

Thanks for all the great responses yesterday on the “Connecting the Community” post. Now, be sure you go in there and explore people in the community. They put their stuff on their because they are ready for more friends, followers, and sharing. Sharing art and ideas online with others is certainly the present and the future, so be sure to show your support by following/friending them! I’m going to go through the whole list myself and finding great stuff. It’s a GREAT way to start your Twitter list of people to follow if you are just getting started!

We have a special guest blogger today. Subscribers to the Free Newsletter got a sneak peek of this thing last week! Now I will bring it to everyone.

Kook Ewo. What a name! How can you not be cool with a name like that?

As you guys know, I get inspiration from a great many places and things outside of traditional photography. Kook is an amazing motion graphics visual artist. You have probably seen several Hollywood blockbuster movies that feature his title sequences. You’ll recognize some from his links below. Just like fellow Frenchman, Fabien Barral, who designed the website, I’ve had Kook Ewo design the title sequence for videos. You’ll notice his fine work in the first few seconds of this PR Demo Reel video.

Below is Kook’s Guest Post (I’ve left in many of his own words because it sounds French, foreign, and interesting!):

1) Where can everyone see your demo reel?

The best way is to have a look on my website ! http://thefrenchtitle.com

2) Tell us a little about you – what should people know?

My name is Kook Ewo. I’m 30 and living in Paris, France.

i’m a title sequence designer. That means my job is to work in direct relation with a film director to help him create the title sequence he wants (a kind of vfx supervisor but only for the title sequence). Sometimes i make the title sequence by myself (for ex solomon kane or silent hill) and sometimes i conceptualize it (write a text explaining what could happen, in accordance with the director, then make storyboards, previz etc), and then i have to find the good company or indie (never happenned yet but i’ll be happy to !) to make it : for ex, on “Splice” i asked the Chezeddy’s guys who did an excellent job. The company could be anywhere in the world and it can be a vendor that is already working on the movie, so that’s quite a simple approach.

3) Tell us about your philosophy about being an artist.

Well I would say.. “being an artist’ in our days is very relative because of all the influences we are swiming into ! So the main thing would be to find when/where we are ourselves, and try to keep it as long as possible ! It’s quite hard. I think as so much things are easy and spectacular to make today with our brand new machines ! So in my case, that means I try (try is the word !) each time to not to use the last trendies effects and try to work more on the concept by respecting the movie (and the directors) i’m working on… It’s really like fashion, sometime you see things that looks gorgeous but one year after, it looks so odd. Well, same in my job : i have to see what the “today style” is but, i have to make something which won’t get old in one year, when the movie will be released… !!

4) Tell us about your Future.

In the next years I want to continue to work with good directors to make them happy and excited by their title sequence ! What I would love (it’s actually beginning with one movie next year) is to imagine title sequence before the shootings.. cause I think it could be a way of experimenting so much new ideas…

I’m also working on two feature scripts that I hope i’ll direct someday.. now I’ve directed two shorts you can see on my website !

Filed under the categories: Travel

I thought, to commemorate this entry on connecting people, that I’d include a photo of an airplane from one of the busiest airports in the world – DFW in Dallas. This is the same plane that I flew to Tokyo on just recently. It was shot from high above in the Admiral’s Club. It was an awfully stormy day, and I was worried that maybe the flight wouldn’t go off on time! We were delayed a few hours… but that gave me plenty of time to set up all my equipment in there like dork!

You guys should meet! Put your info below!

We have a great community here, so I wanted to extend this optional invitation for you all to meet one another!

So, what’s your Twitter or Facebook or both? Put it in the comments below! I know many of you have friended or followed me — that’s great — but I think you should all connect with one other too! There are many people from various backgrounds and I think you all would find some unexpected connections! On FB, some people are open about friending (like me), but on Twitter, you can follow anyone without their consent.

When you put your Twitter or Facebook below in the comments, kindly put it in the web format so people can easily follow or find you (like http://www.twitter.com/TreyRatcliff or http://www.facebook.com/TreyRatcliff). I put an example below in the comments.

Edit:  A lot of names below, see here on how to follow them!

First, here is a Twitter list of the Stuck In Customs Community. I suggest you go through there and follow people!

Second, soon, Tweetdeck will release the ability for you to auto-import a list and make it a column. Don’t know what I mean? Go ahead and download Tweetdeck and start gettin’ the hang of it. I’ll update this post as soon as you can add a “List” as a column along with instructions.

What’s my Twitter strategy?

First, I use Twitter the “right” way. That is, I have taken time to carefully build, re-build, cull, and personalize a list of several hundred people to follow. These are people I have discovered that are interesting, inspirational, or just guilty pleasures. I look at Twitter several times a day to get new ideas, unexpected finds, and news from people that have similar tastes to mine.

Second, and less importantly, I use Twitter to filter the world for anyone curious enough to follow me. I try to keep a balance of: 33% inspirational and/or artistic finds that I share, 33% sharing of my own work with everyone, and 33% connecting people who should know one another! Oh, and 1% WILDCARD. At least, this is my goal! I may not always hit those ratios, but I do my best.

Last, here are 10 Things You Need to Stop Tweeting About ! It’s really funny… those of you that don’t like Twitter probably are:

1) Following people that are full of BS that do many things on that list
2) Or you don’t want to tell the world what you are doing (THAT is okay — but… you don’t have to tell people! You can still follow people you find interesting without even sending out a tweet.)
3) You have yet to realize Trey’s Twitter Truth: “Twitter is cool because it’s a nonstop party you don’t have to hang out in a small group of mostly annoying people.”

Filed under the categories: Dallas, Nikon D3X, Texas, Travel

When I was in Tokyo, I had a great time out with Altus! He stayed with me here in Austin, and we were able to meet up for a fun time of photography out in Tokyo. That’s one of the BEST things about having a blog, I must say! It gives me the chance to meet all kinds of nice people like YOU that extend gracious invitations for photography!

After dark, Altus took me to this cool restaurant (btw, the original sized version has nice details on Flickr!) The manager was very nice and let us sit where we wanted and then a carte-blanche for taking photos. He asked if I would send him photos and if I charge… and I told him no… I do this stuff for fun! So, we have a smart and well-movied community here – who can tell me the name of this restaurant?

Peachpit definitely has the sample from my book up on their website now. Just click on “Sample Content” and you’ll be in good shape. There are some very good tips just in that 20 pages!

Filed under the categories: Japan, Nikon D3X, Tokyo, Travel

I had a great long weekend recently. It started in the San Francisco area where I attended the ReadWriteWeb conference on the “Real Time Web”. It was very cool to be sitting in rooms with engineers from Google and other major companies that are in the middle of evolving the web itself. There was lots of good food for thought. I was looking at it from the perspective of how to use the future web to increase attention to good content. I think we are moving into an area where attention can be created, just like wealth in capitalism.

Insofar as I believe attention can be created, I think we are certainly on to something with www.HDRspotting.com. It’s purpose is to drive more attention and traffic to other HDR photographers. I understand from some people that they are getting 5x the number of views there than on Flickr! Great! It was started with the intention that attention can be created, spread, and shared in a more intelligent way. I also get a lot of emails of people asking me for invite codes. I don’t handle that! Sorry! But, I do understand that new codes are going out all the time… new features are being added every few days.

This shot below is from 17-mile drive off the famous Pacific Coast Highway in California, a little trip that produced a lot of good shots I will sprinkle in over the coming weeks and months! Hwy 1 runs down a winding coastline, and there are great sites all over the place. This spot is just north of Carmel and a stone’s throw from Pebble Beach. When I was there, I also took this shot with my iPhone. The iPhone is good… but… comon! This one is a bit better… hehe. Am I wrong?

Filed under the categories: California, Carmel, Nikon D3X, Travel

Peachpit, the book publisher for “A World in HDR“, has released the a sneak peak of the book for you guys! I think it looks great so far, and I’m excited for you to see it. You can visit the Peachpit site to take a look at the PDF. One important thing to note is that the PDF is not print-quality. So, the colors and resolution are not “full res”. The final book will be perfect color quality and detail, of course!

P.S. none of the photos below are “zoomable”, except for the “Grassy Roof” one… you can get into the Flickr larger size there. Or, alternatively, you can look at the details on the PDF file.

You can pre-order the book there from Peachpit, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, or you can pre-order here on the HDR book site on Stuck In Customs.  If you order here, it is a little more expensive, but you also get an autographed copy.  Even better, there is an option to get an signed Limited Edition Numbered print.  The only time I will be offering that is for this pre-order.  Once we stop taking pre-orders, we will no longer offer this print.  Collect it now!

Filed under the categories: Travel

The photo below was shot in the Norris Geysir Basin of Yellowstone. I put together another “Walking Around Yellowstone” video with some HDR how-to activity. I think you will like it! I go through three shots and show three finished products. This is one of them. I should release it sometime in the next week or so.

Also, I got good news on A World in HDR, the new book that’s shipping before the holidays! Our publisher, Peachpit, is going to put about 20 pages from Chapter 2 online for viewing on Friday! So, come back around 1 AM CST or so on Friday morning and I’ll put up a sneak preview! Very exciting! I know you guys and gals have really been anticipating it, so I’m happy for you to see it!

Filed under the categories: Montana, Nikon D3X, Travel, Wyoming, Yellowstone

One evening after dinner in Kyoto, I visited a unique garden that was maintained by a sect of monks in Kyoto. I understood that the best time to go was at night because they had painstakingly decorated the entire expanse with lights and unique effects. It sounded perfect for photography, so of course I had to go!

When I arrived, I had to take off my shoes at the entrance. The inside was a traditional Japanese structure, raised off the floor, covered with mats and separated by rice paper walls. The monks lived and worked inside. This was plain as I moved from room to room via darkly lit hallways. I took this photo while barefoot. Little blue lights covered the grass and shone like stars. The whole place was quite unbelievable, fun, and unexpected.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Kyoto, Nikon D3X, Travel

This is a photo of a strange place on South Congress. I was down at a restaurant in the area and I saw this when I was walking back to my car. As usual, I had my tripod and camera ready, so I set up for a shot. It was actually a store that sold all kinds of pop art and a lot of neon. I thought it looked cool through the frosted glass. Any of you Austinites know the name of this place?

Also, recently I had the pleasure of hanging out with RC Concepcion when he came down to Austin to host a photo-editing seminar along with Dave Cross in Austin. Here is RC’s HDR he shot here in Austin. I found out he was coming to Austin on Twitter, so we tweeted up a little get-together in a well-orchestrated 140-character tennis match. We went out to shoot the SRV statue in the rain, ate a leisurely dinner full of philosophical thoughts, and then I had him over to show him the “Stuck in Motion” video over at my home before it was released. I was happy that this guy, the know-it-all (in a good way) host of Layers TV could not even figure it out! BTW, if you are looking to bone up on all your Adobe products, be sure to watch some Layers TV or subscribe to the free video podcast in iTunes.

Filed under the categories: Austin, Nikon D3X, Texas, Travel