Stuck In Customs

Upcoming Chicago Party

On January 2nd, we have our Chicago Book Party.  You can see more information there or sign up on the Facebook Event Page.

Free talk in New York on Dec 15th at B&H Photo – A Firehose of HDR

See the photo below? One of the most common questions I get is “How do you make an HDR out of a single photo?” Well, I’ll go over that and more on Dec 15th at noon at the Incredible B&H Photo in New York. You can get more New York B&H event info here.

Also, you may know that B&H is a partner of Stuck in Customs — I recommend you buy from them on my Digital SLR recommendations page.

Daily Photo – Chicago from a Chopper

Chicago is an awesome city and I always have a good time there.  This time of year, it gets a bit cold… and if you don’t have a good coat pre-buttoned before you go outside, well, that’s a big mistake.

I have a good friend there that arranged a helicopter for me in Chicago and took the door off!  I hung out for a few hours battling the backwash as we circled the city and flew in and out of the buildings.  This is one of the shots from that series, and I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I did shooting it!

Upcoming Events and Appearances

I have a few cool events and appearances coming up. The first one is the book party in SOHO in New York this Monday on the 14th. We shut off all invitations, and if you simply must get in, don’t ask me — It’s best to ask the June Arunga, the event organizer. You can contact her at [email protected].

Other Upcoming Events:

• New York, Dec 15th – B&H Photo Event Room – A Firehose of HDR with Trey Ratcliff.  (Free) More info.
• Austin, Dec 16th – Smugmug Meeting – Guest Speaker Trey Ratcliff. (Free)  More info
• Tampa, FL, Jan 16/17 – HDR Workshop with Scott Bourne. (Not Free, but almost) More info.

The Moments Between Episode 3: 140 seconds in New York

The Nikon Festival (please leave comments there too!) is a fun thing where anyone can submit a video of “My Day”.

I recently spent a day in New York and recorded many of the little things I saw in between the moments. The real title, should perhaps be “14 Seconds in New York”, because a lot can happen in those 14 seconds.

For more info on this technique, and to see other videos, visit the “Stuck In Motion” page.

And here are a few of my favorite New York shots:

Book Update

Well I have been up most of the night signing books and prints from the pre-orders.  I’ve done over 1,000 so far and I am honestly dog-tired!  It’s a priority to get all this done and re-shipped out to our fulfillment company ASAP.  I have gotten countless emails from people wondering where it is!  Hehe… we are working on it as fast as possible…    I’ll put up a behind-the-scenes shot on the Facebook Fan page soon!

You can still order from the “A World in HDR” page, and that will link you to various places online where you can buy the book.  It won’t be autographed or come with a print, I’m afraid, but you will still get a great book!

Limited Edition Numbered Prints now on sale

If you go to the “Buy Prints” area of the website, it links over to our new printing solution.  We have partnered with Really Big Canvas to get collectors and fans something amazing!

We only have 20 prints available, and each one is a limited edition series print run of 250.  After this series is sold out, it will be forever.  I know we have many collectors here, and this is a wonderful way to keep it unique, special, and fun.

Every week we will be adding one more print to the lot.  Those will be Friday events.  For example, you’ll see the Bamboo Forest below, but you will also notice it is not in the store yet…. I think that one is hitting in a few weeks, so get ready!

For the Limited Edition Paper Series, they start as low as $99 for the basic size.  For the Limited Edition Canvas Series, they start at $199, and as you can see from the photos in the Driskill Hotel below (from before the book signing), they are quite wonderful and bold.

On the new website, you can see all sorts of wonderful examples like:

• Christmas on the Champs-Élysées
• Secret Passageway to the Treasure
• The Open Road
• Exploring South America
• Swallowing the Ruins

Austin Party – Thanks for coming!

I hope everyone that came to the event had a nice time and had some good stuff out of it. I enjoyed meeting you and thanks for the encouragement! We had a few people pick up their books early, and that is cool.

We’ll endeavor to get the other pre-orders sent out as quickly as humanly possible! It takes a long time to sign all the books, get them together with the prints, and then re-ship everything out… but we are doing our best!

You can see the Driskill fan page on Facebook, where you can submit photos for the contest. I talked with Brett and he confirmed with me that only the winning photo will be granting rights so that the Driskill can use it… Not all submissions – so no worries about that! 🙂

Interview on CBS

I was on the CBS news yesterday here in Austin about the new HDR book. Jason Wheeler was a cool guy and a traveler himself, so we got along quite well… at least for those wild five minutes that we met. That sounds bad.

Austin is cool

Austin is one of those cool places where the favorite past time seems to be “talking about how cool Austin is”. That’s it! There’s never anything specific… just a general “cool” feeling, and that’s kinda nice. Below are a few shots from around the environs…

All Prints Going Offline – Going Dark

We are changing the way we handle prints here. In the past, we have done what everyone else does, which is dump a ton of prints into an online printing service. I’m not convinced that’s the best way thing for our customers. We are going to do something different and bold, and we are launching in a few days. I think it will be much more meaningful for fans, collectors, and everyone in between.

For now, we are taking all printing options offline. Stay tuned for Friday for the big announcement!

Photoblog Awards – Come Vote

Thanks for all the votes already!  There are just a few days left, so now is the perfect time to vote.  If you do enjoy the images here and think the world should know, then I would certainly appreciate it!

Daily Photo – Entering The Forest Alone

It’s not often I use a zoom lens to do landscape photography (this is 125mm), since the conditions have to be just right (at least, for me).  You do get this strange thing called “compression”, which will be a new concept for people that come here not familiar with photography techniques.  Maybe you have seen this in horror movies…  You know, someone gets some shocking news, and then the camera does this strange thing where it pulls out and the background flexes while the actor remains still.  Well, compression is kind like that, but not really.  But it can bring things in the far distance “forward” to appear bigger than they really are, as is the case with the distant blue forest in this shot from Yellowstone.

Believe it or not, I was so exhausted after I took this shot, I pulled over and slept for two hours in the backseat.  There is nothing worse than waking up, groggy in the backseat of a strange car, and a tripod jamming you in the small of the back.

Poster design by the great Fabien Barral

I know I know… I always get comments I am not coming to YOUR city!  Sorry about that… believe me, I’d love to make it an around-the-world tour.  But for now, we are just doing three cities, Austin, New York, and Chicago.

The Austin one will also feature a Photowalk where the best photo wins $500 in Driskill gift cards.  Cool!  Also, I’ll be debuting the next Stuck In Motion video.  It’s going to be a 140-second job that I’m entering into the Nikon Festival.  It’s very cool, and I’ll be sharing it with everyone else the day after the party.  Get ready!

And no, you of course DO NOT need to buy a book to come to the party… It’s not a sales-thing at all… the book is just an excuse to have a little party!

I’ll be giving a short talk, signing books, meeting people, and giving more details on the photo contest.  After the event, everyone can share their work on the FB Event page, just like last time.

Photo-related Christmas Presents

What is everyone getting for Christmas presents this year that are photo-related?  I’m of course asking for a few lenses (started a discussion on the FB Fan page here) — what about you?

Also, I am thinking about ordering a bunch of these eStarling photo frames for my extended family.  They look cool because I can just email them photos and they show up right in their frames… same for movies and stuff.  It seems smart!  Maybe you all have heard of similar internet-enabled easy-to-use frames?

Daily Photo – The Solitary Lighthouse

Icelandic lighthouses are pretty rough places.  Well, I bet any Scandinavian lighthouse must be pretty tough…   and I bet the salty old characters that live in them are tough as nails.  You can see the high icy contrails in the extreme atmosphere… but it seemed like those same icy winds were whipping around at ground-level too.  Once again, I was reminded that I really need to get a good pair of gloves!

I don’t think living in a freezing lighthouse is for me.  Maybe if I had a slanket and high-speed internet, I could take it for a few weeks.  Speaking of slankets and snuggies and stuff…  I heard there was one you can get for air-travel and it has an inflatable neck-pillow inside if it.  I can’t imagine anything quite so pre-meditated… but actually it sounds kind of nice!

New How-to Video coming within a week

I have a nice long video that I shot while at Yellowstone.  It discusses an interesting shoot of an awesome geothermal location and the trouble I went through to get it.

It will be available in the Videos section, along with all the others

Daily Photo – Where the Impressionists Haunted the Streets

Montmartre, in the north of Paris, is a very artsy place and I would love to open a little photography studio there, even if it is a bit touristy now. I don’t think they had neon paint-palettes hanging in the streets when it was frequented by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and the whole cast of bohemian characters.

I’m halfway through a book now called “The Judgment of Paris”, about all these guys had to go through to get their paintings shown in the Salon. Old-school judges would only approve paintings that showed historical scenes and the moral teachings of antiquity. Consequently, dozens of today’s priceless paintings were stamped on the back with a big red “R” for “Refused”.

After the Impressionists’ paintings were refused by the selection committee, the artists would gather at cafes here, drinking wine that tasted of “mountwash and soot”, and lament about the state of the art, so to speak.

Where the Impressionists Haunted the Streets

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2020-07-09 12:11:25
• CameraNIKON D2Xs
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time2.2
• Aperture5.6
• ISO100
• Focal Length20.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+2

Austin Party in a few days!

Soon to be followed by Chicago and New York, I look forward to meeting you at the Austin Launch Party! The Austin one will be extra-great because there is a combined Photowalk where you can win $500 for the best photo of the Driskill at Christmas!

Remember, you don’t have to buy a book or anything… I look forward to meeting and talking whether or not you buy one… no problemo! It’s a typical low-key Austin artsy event… comon down!

Pre-orders for special packages end in a day – time is running out!

We are taking the special HDR Book preorders here on the site until Dec 6th at midnight. If you want the autographed copy or the one with the limited edition print, that is the only way. We will have to cut off special orders after that so that I can get everything signed and re-shipped out! Now, of course, you can still pre-order from Peachpit, Amazon, Borders, and Barnes and Noble — these are all other options for you if you simply want the book.

Your Home At Christmas? It could be!

The publisher was kind enough to send me an early copy that rolled off the printing press. Everything is gearing up! I know you guys wanted me to peel open the book and show you more of the fabulous insides, but you’ll just have to wait!

Yours truly, freezing in the desert

On Thursday morning, I woke up at 3:45 AM to go catch the sunrise in the high Nevada desert. One of my friends, Cameron Grant, picked me up at 4 AM to drive out into the wild part of Nevada, straight up a mountain, and into sub-freezing weather. We got out of the car, and I was almost instantly encased in carbonite!

While I was shooting and solidifying in 25 degree weather, Cameron was sneaky in the shadows behind me… he took this photo and then sent it to me, right before he is off to Luxor on an HDR adventure of his own. I wish him well!

Twitter Contest Winners

Thanks to everyone that participated in the Twitter Contest to win a free copy of theHDR Book, “A World in HDR”! I think Peachpit was completely overwhelmed with the results. I hope it gave you a chance to discover and share some great art on the web. Thanks to John P from OneMansBlog.com who was The Judge. Visit his website below and see the winners!

• Day 1 Winner – Theme:  Landscape
• Day 2 Winner – Theme:  Vehicle
• Day 3 Winner – Theme:  Architecture

Less than 24 hours left on eBay Auction!

The first in the Limited Edition Numbered Print for the book is on eBay.  It looks to be a hot item…  only for the true collectors out there.

Daily Photo – The Harleyfest on 6th Street

This is one of the best times in Austin for HDR Photography!  I really think it’s perfect perfect conditions to really show off what this style of photography can do.  Long exposures just don’t do the trick.  The wonderful thing about being there is that the human eye really can see all these colors and light levels at the same time.  At least… to those of us that see like this.  I’m convinced that after talking to countless groups that not everyone “sees” in the same way.  It’s not that one way is better than another – just different. What do you think?