HDR DVD getting closer!

I know there is rampant demand for the HDR DVD, and I wanted to give you an update. The production is about to come to a close, and we can get it to everyone as soon as possible. I’ve been getting early cuts of some of the sections, and they look really sharp. They are filled with many, many examples of my exact workflow, showing how I make layers in Photoshop, how I do my settings in Photomatix, the best order of operations, how I “think through images”, and more. You’ll love it!

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Daily Photo – The Driskill at Night

Here is one of the photos that I process on the HDR DVD.

During the Austin Workshop, we had a professional team in place to make sure everything went off without a hitch. We started the weekend with a long photowalk through the streets of Austin. I stopped to take a photo of The Driskill hotel, which happened to be the same place we held the actual workshop. I talked through the shot a little bit and what I was trying to accomplish.

During the actual workshop, I did not process this photo. But I have since done so, and I recorded the whole session to be on the DVD as well. It’s one of those classic “problems” where there is a lot of ghosting from the car movement.

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

Minor Altercation

A few nights ago, I had a minor photography/police incident at Downtown Disney (Twitter followers saw the ordeal realtime). Everything is resolved now, and maybe a result of the whole thing is that security will be easier on photographers in the future. We live in hope!

Now, I’ve never had a problem using tripods or “professional-looking equipment” at any of the Disney Parks, like the Magic Kingdom or Epcot, but Downtown Disney seems to have a special set of rules. I was approached by security when they saw the tripod – they asked what I was doing. I said I was a blogger and was taking personal photos. They pressed me more. They asked if I had permission, and I said that in fact I did have permission, although that should not matter; I’m just a photographer taking photos of a place to show the world some beautiful things.

I didn’t have my ID with me, since everyone in Disney World carries around these little Disney ID cards that you get at the resorts. You charge food, goodies, and everything on it. You don’t need a wallet or anything, so I just leave that back at the resort. Since I didn’t have ID, they called in the Sheriff’s Department. I called my wife, who was shopping elsewhere with the kids to swoop in and vouch for me.

My wife was of course quite worried and upset, seeing me surrounded by four security guards and a newly-arrived member of the Sheriff’s department. Luckily (I guess?), she had her ID with her. The police took all her information down (why?) and then left. I assume they finally got the right people on the phone at Disney that knew who I was and that I had permission.

However, I still strongly believe that even if I didn’t have permission, that I, or any other photographer, should be allowed to take photos. It’s 2010! Everyone else is taking crappy photos with their mobile phones and uploading to Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and all over the place. I’m doing the same thing as them, but mine are simply taken with a bigger, nicer camera. What’s the crime? Even more importantly, all I’m doing is promoting the beauty of this place to hundreds of thousands of people here on the blog.

With what little influence I have at Disney, I suggested that they tell the powers-that-be to stop bothering photographers (I know good man William Beem, among others, also had a run-in). I understand there are some new conversations in the works, but I don’t know if anything will really change.   Let’s hope so.

Daily Photo – Beautiful Disney World at Sunset

Hey, you know… I can’t stay mad at Disney for too long.  I think those issues are just at Downtown Disney.

This photo below, from Epcot, is one of the reasons I keep coming back again and again.  It’s such an amazing place, and Epcot may be my favorite new spot for photography at Disney.

This is the “France” area of the World Showcase, which is a huge lake that is circumnavigated by about 10 different countries or so.  Each one has a cluster of buildings set in the theme of the country.  They are all quite authentic, and the areas are staffed with people from the countries.  The Norway area has authentic-looking and -sounding Norwegians.  The Germany area is filled with Germans in postcard-German-clothes.  The Canada area has people that look and sound like Americans.

The afternoon had ripped open a wicked thunderstorm on the whole park.  It was subsiding around sunset, so the clouds were swirling about with these wonderful tempestuous formations.  I set up to take this shot before moving over to the Japanese area to watch the big fireworks show on the lake.  While I was taking these shots, by the way, I had sent my family into one of the pastry shoppes here in the France area to load up on wonderful little morsels to keep us fully loaded during the fireworks show!

If you have seen the wonderful fireworks show at Epcot — where is your favorite place to stand?  I’ve got a new spot.. I’ll reveal that with a bunch of new tips/ideas soon!

Filed under the categories: Disney World, Florida, Nikon D3X, Orlando, Travel

New Limited Edition Prints Available

Every week, a new print comes available.  It’s always a pleasure to make these available to collectors and the like.  Each of them is numbered to ensure each one is unique.  We keep a record of the original owners of these so there is trail, which you should also follow if you want to check on the authenticity of a work.  There are a lot of rogue printing companies out there, but just by purchasing via this link, you can be assure it is authentic.

This week’s print is “The Treetop Temple Protects Kyoto“. It’s one of my favorites from Japan, and I’m sure you’ll see why.

Daily Photo – The Kiss

I’m sure most of you recognize this from the famous photo in New York after the war. I’ve wondered if that photographer took hundreds of photos that day and all of them were horrible except for the famous one. I’ve had days like that! Anyway, I’d love to see all of his various work from that day to see what else he snapped up.

That photo has been recreated here into a giant statue in San Diego. It now sits in front of the huge aircraft carrer, which you can see in the distance, enshrouded in fog.

Filed under the categories: California, Nikon D3X, San Diego, Travel

New Book on Book List!

As some of you know, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Matt Ridley and his wife, Anya Hurlbert. I knew of Matt previously because I’ve always been a fan of his unique science/genetics books; these have delightful and unexpected hooks into economics, anthropology, history, and critical thinking. And then I found out his wife was also of a different sort of scientist, with a concentration in Visual Neuroscience. If you saw my Google Talk, then you’ll know that is also a big interest area for me! Follow her link above if you want to read more.

Matt has a new book that just came out called “The Rational Optimist“. If you want a taste of it, read Matt’s recent Wall Street Journal article.

Anyway, here on the site, I have “Trey’s Book List“, that has all sorts of suggestions. There is surely something for everyone in there!

Bonus Book Suggestion!

I just finished listening to the Audio Book of Daemon. You gotta get it! I haven’t heard anything this good in a while… and, as opposed to most books, I really do recommend the audio version. Jeff Gurner does an amazing job with the voices, and hearing the computer voices talk is more than entertaining! The author, Daniel Suarez, really knows his stuff. And, I would not be surprised if he has read some of Matt Ridley’s books — particularly “The Red Queen”.

Daily Photo – Sunset at Hearst Castle

Maybe people in California get spoiled by good sunsets. Not living there, I don’t know! But, when you are sitting up high on a mountain, in a castle-mansion, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, how could you not get spoiled?

And this isn’t even the main castle. This is just one of the guest-houses. Hearst had several guest houses there, each one as stunning as the next.

If you are enjoying these Hearst photos, I’ve now published six so far. You can see all the Hearst Castle Photos. Note: These are also accessible via the “Categories” down on the right side of the page.

Filed under the categories: California, Hearst Castle, LA, Nikon D3X, Travel

Charity Update

We are up to $4,200 donated so far in our Stuck In Customs Kiva Team! Thanks everyone. I know that those of you that put money in are having a good time watching what happens to it… I know that most everything I put in gets paid back. What has been your experience? I’m curious!

Daily Photo – Your Road Ahead

While in New Zealand, we took a series of roads in the south island to go out into the country for an afternoon of archery. On the way there, the roads became less and less robust, and smaller roads would peel off in different directions. I spotted this road and pulled over to take a shot. This one called for the 70-200mm lens to get that interesting compression factor.

The archery was a lot of fun. We visited a little farm, and a 10-year-old girl was running the archery bit. My 9-year-old, Ethan, took a liking to her. So that she could better understand him, he did his best to put on his fake New Zealand accent.

At one point, she asked Ethan, with eyes wide, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to visit America. Tell me! What is it like?”

Ethan crinkled his brow, in deep concentration, and said, “You see, it’s rather booooteefull.”

Filed under the categories: New Zealand, Nikon D3X, Travel

My Sprint 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot is Pretty Crappy

So, I was going to either get the Verizon MiFi or this Sprint 4G Mobile Hotspot thing… I needed a fast mobile connection that I could use on the road instead of depending on coffee shops or hotel rooms. I could not decide which one to get, and in the end, I opted for the Sprint one because I thought the 3G would be equal to the MiFi but the 4G would be better where I had coverage. What I’ve learned (briefly):

• The 4G is better if the area has 4G.  Austin does, so that is nice.
• I’ve since traveled to Plano, Dallas, and Orlando, none of which could pick up a 4G signal
• So, instead it connects at 3G – it is glacially slow!
  • It says “3G”, but I think it is lying… because it seems 10x slower than my iPhone alone
  • I have run it on Speedtest.net many times.  Half the time, it is to slow to even load the site, much less measure it!  When it does run, it shows about 0.09 mb/s.  I might as well be on Prodigy
  • Don’t believe anything can be that slow?  See this Speed Screenshot from Speedtest.net!
  • Before, I had used Cali Lewis’ MiFi and it was very fast – must faster than this Sprint black hole of bandwidth
• It gets very hot.  Very very hot.
• The battery only lasts about 2 hours.  That is pretty lame, really.  Even when you have it plugged in via USB, it appears to drain faster than it charges.
• When I use it for a few hours, the Internet stops working…  It requires a reboot of the device.  This has happened to me 4 times now.

Photo-Posting While Travelling Tip As you know, I put up a new photo every day here on the blog. This is hard both from a processing standpoint, since these can take anywhere from 20 mins to several hours to produce. It’s also hard logistically because I’ve got to get everything uploaded and into its place before posting! So, I’ve taken to uploading 10-20 photos to SmugMug (see my SmugMug Review) at a time before a trip. I go in an “Hide” the photos. That way, I can just go online and “Unhide” them when I get ready to make the daily post. This seems to be a good solution.

Daily Photo – Approaching Grand Central Station in the Rain

Rainy nights in cities pose a tough problem. Really, in many ways, you have to fight against every natural human instinct to go out into the rain on purpose. It’s so easy just to want to stay inside, make a hot cocoa (or, a think Aztec Drinking Chocolate in my case), watch a movie, be all cozy, etc etc. But the little photographer inside of you also knows how interesting things are out there!

So, I tend to compromise, and force myself to go outside half the time and stay inside half the time. This occasion in New York City was obviously one of the times I went out in the rain.

You can see I am approaching Grand Central Station — and that is the famous Chrysler Building in the background. This was shot with the Nikon 14-24 Lens (See my Nikon 14-24 Review). It’s an expensive lens, so if you are looking for something cheaper that also takes great wide-angle shots, check out the Sigma 10-20mm (Review coming some day when I mysteriously get more time).

Filed under the categories: New York, New York City, Nikon D3X, Travel

See the latest on Flatbooks.com !

Filed under the categories: Travel

Why I don’t use Watermarks

I get this question a lot, and it often comes up in interviews. I know my opinion is different than many other photographers, and that is okay.

As you know, my work is all Creative Commons Non-Commercial. That means people, as long as they give credit and link back here to http://www.StuckInCustoms.com can use my images on their blogs, wallpaper, personal use – anything – as long as it is not used commercially. Every day, I upload a HUGE max-resolution image to the Internet. I do not have any fear at all… Believe me, it’s quite liberating living in a world without internet-stealth-fear.

People that want to license our images regularly contact licensing at stuckincustoms.com – we get many of these every day of the week.

So why don’t I use watermarks? It’s a multi-part philosophy –

1) Watermarks look ugly. Whenever I look at a photo with a watermark, often times, ALL I can think about is that watermark! It’s so distracting. Maybe this is just me.

2) Legitimate companies do not steal images to use commercially. So I don’t have any logical fear there.

3) There are other services, like Tineye (and Google) that can help my team easily find bottom-feeders.

4) We do register our images with the copyright office, so if someone uses an image commercially without a proper license, it is an easy lawsuit.

5) I don’t have to maintain two versions of each image – one with a watermark and one without.

6) NOT using watermarks and using creative commons helps more and more people to use your image freely for fun, which increases traffic and builds something I call “internet-trust.”

7) As image search and image recognition get better and better, there will be no need to watermark things. In 1 year+, we’ll be able to r-click an image and choose “Google-find the original creator” — there is a bit trail to first-on-the-internet.

Yes, last, there will be bottom-feeders that steal your stuff. I call this the cost of doing business on the internet. These are the Tic-Tacs that are stolen from the 7-11. It is impossible to maintain 100% of your digital inventory, so wanting “perfection” in your online strategy is an illusion.

Daily Photo – Beautiful and Classic Savannah

When I drove through Savannah, I met up with my good friend Scott Kublin who showed me some of the sights. This gem of a place was one of the first places we visited. I walked up and down the road a few times to find the most interesting place to take a photo. This one was taken with the 14-24 lens — although the other interesting shot was the 200mm shot from much further away. I decided to go with this one because I really liked the position of the sun.

Filed under the categories: Georgia, Nikon D3X, Savannah, Travel

New eBook now Available to Newsletter Subscribers!

Issue #14 will be flying into people’s email boxes some time this Sunday morning. Note that I made a big mistake yesterday! I had the signup form on there, but the “Submit” button did nothing! I can’t believe it… that was so dumb of me… I think a ton of people put in their info and clicked submit, and just assumed it worked!

But now it is fixed… you can sign up below, and, after confirmation, you will get a Welcome email that has a link to the new Newsletter #14. It’s the prettiest newsletter in the world! Thanks again for forwarding it to all your friends, family, and other loved ones!

Newsletter Map!

I haven’t updated this in a long time… I need to… but a few hours after we opened up the Newsletter, you can see how many people subscribed and where you all are from — cool!

Daily Photo – Secret Meetings in Hollywood

This photo was taken in Los Angeles (Santa Monica to be exact) after I got finished with one of those Hollywood Power-Lunches you always hear about. I’m not yet ready to talk about it… but I just wanted to put out a little teaser for you. I’ll be sure to put out the full story when it is ready to be told.

So, anyway, after the meeting I took my camera and tripod across a few streets over to the beach. I’m not sure, but I’m fairly certain this is where they filmed the opening to Three’s Company. It’s burned into some deep layer… strange bits of my 70′s brain were firing away as I was walking down the coast. The palm trees and the blue sky — they were so LA — so I set up to grab a shot.

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

New eBook – First goes on sale to Newsletter Subscribers! For the past few months, I’ve been working on a new eBook. It’s very cool — a very detailed description of a best-of-breed digital workflow. Are you starting to feel like your digital photos are a little unorganized? I’ve put together a great system for you! The first shot at it will go to Newsletter subscribers. It’s free to sign up, so just do it below! First Name: Email: 5 Tips for Photographing People in Public I’m working on an upcoming post that gives some practical and easy-to-follow-through-on advice on taking photos of people in public. I get a ton of questions about it in Twitter and whatnot, so I am happy to share these tips. You’ll notice a lot of this activity in the new video below…. and I know everyone enjoys and wants to take pictures of people in public, but are sometimes unsure of how to go about it.

New Video – Japan: Heartbeats of Time

I spend a lot of time thinking about the way memory and sight work together. I don’t think we remember in “pictures” or long videos… but something in between. Perhaps we also sense, at times, more than 30 fps, and unexpected parts of the brain fire when we are presented with certain objects and forms.

If you want to know more about how I did this, visit the “Stuck In Motion” section of the website. Good news – the best bits now only require a $200 camera!

Also, you may enjoy seeing my free HDR Tutorial, which describes how I accomplish some of the other favorite photos below, which were also shot around Japan.

A Few of my Favorite Photos from Japan

Filed under the categories: Japan, Kyoto, Nikko, Nikon D3S, Tokyo, Travel

Abduzeedo Gets the Exclusive!

I have released a new video today that you just gotta see.  The Exclusive rights to show it were nabbed up by Abduzeedo.com and the amazing team of Fabio, Gisele, and all the other from that Brazilian Design Powerhouse!  Fabio actually came to my Google Talk on HDR Photography in Mountain View, so it was really cool to meet him in person.

We will be showing the video here on StuckInCustoms tomorrow, but you should head over to Abduzeedo in the meantime.  That site is a constant source of artistic inspiration for me…  I think you will dig it too.

New Shot from the Textures Tutorial

Today’s photo below was made with a few of my 150 Textures from the popular Textures Tutorial.  The downloads on this thing have been crazy…  There is even an illegal site out there that shows over 30,000 downloads.  Pirates!  Anyway, I know none of you nice people would do such a thing… so I appreciate the support you give your friendly internet artists!

William Beem recently put up a review on the aptly named WilliamBeem.com – I can tell from that photo that he is really getting the hang of it – cool!

Daily Photo – The Edge of Chile

Today’s photo comes from the from the very southern tip of the Americas. It is a bitterly cold place, even in the summer. I believe that the glaciation period is relatively recent, so the peaks are extra jagged and everything feels fresh and raw.

I can’t believe there are actually people that climb this thing! It was hard enough getting myself up high enough on a distant peak to take this shot. Then again, I’m not exactly in mountain-climbing shape. I’ve heard the old answer to the question, “Why do you climb the mountain?” The answer is always, “Because it’s there”. Funny — that is my same answer when people ask my why I don’t want to climb the mountain.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, Chile, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Stuck In Customs Textures, Travel

The Great Richard MacManus of the Great New Zealand

In the last two months, I’ve gotten to meet two great Kiwis: Richard MacManus (founder of ReadWriteWeb), and Ray Furgeson (NZ Ambassador to the US). John P, who put up the video of my art yesterday, set up a dinner down in Austin during SXSW with me, Richard MacManus, Elyssa Pallai, Cali Lewis, Sean Ammirati. We ate at the famous Oasis here in Austin and saw a beautiful sunset. John gave us all a secret look at some sweet new features of Woopra before we bloated ourselves on Mexican food. It was great!

I also was very happy to find out more about Richard, his background, and more about the way he thinks about things. I’ve always been a fan of ReadWriteWeb, and even went out to their “Real Time Web” conference last year. I hope I didn’t bore Richard and Elyssa by talking about my plans to move my family and StuckInCustoms.com to New Zealand… but I just get quite excited about their country. Maybe with today’s photo of the strange spherical boulders, you’ll see why.

If you want to find out more about what it looks like there, just click the New Zealand category here on the site!

The Six of us at Dinner at the Oasis.  BTW, I’m the one in the glasses.

New Tweetboard Widget

I added a new Tweetboard widget there on the left. It’s a quick way for you to check in on the latest tweets and conversations on Twitter. I am at Twitter.com/TreyRatcliff.

Daily Photo – The Mysterious Moeraki Boulders

These are some of the most mysterious and alien structures I have ever seen!

Yesterday I remarked that I had a major in computer science. Well, for a short time, I had a double-major in comp sci and Geophysics. I got pretty deep into it until I had a fight with a Geology teacher over an intellectual matter (he was wrong and still is), and I dropped that half of the major. Anyway, it never dulled my interest in rocks and Earth science. So, when I saw these strange round rocks for the first time, I was extra-fascinated. Not that I had any idea what they were. My years of geology training did me no good at all… I think it was even more frustrating because I knew all the things they could not be. The remaining possibilities just seemed off-the-chart impossible.

And worse, I didn’t have a mobile connection to Wikipedia to help me figure it all out with my iPhone-tricorder!

After I got back, I was able to figure out a bit more of the arcane science around it all. Even more interesting, I read that 12 miles south of this spot is another are called the “Katki Boulders”. They contain the bones of mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. Cool!

Filed under the categories: Moeraki, New Zealand, Nikon D3X, Travel