Stuck In Customs

Solo Traveler

Have you heard of the Solo Traveler website? They’re having a photo contest… I think there are some good prizes! I did not enter… not even sure if they are taking more entries this year. But keep it on your calendar for next year. One of my friends, Griffin Stewart, told me about it… showed me his Rice Farmer Photo on Solo Traveler. Go in there and give him a good vote!

Daily Photo – Inside The Egg

This is sort of the opposite of rice-farming in China.

This building, lovingly called “The Egg” by locals, is the National Centre for the Performing Arts. It’s a gigantic and wonderful opera house that you have to see to believe.

Thanks to my contacts there, I had full access to go anywhere and shoot everything. There was a big entourage with me this day. I had my assistant (The great Jacky Woo) and translator. Also following me was a reporter from Reuters, someone from the “People’s Daily”, which is their local paper. There was as a delightful gentleman from the Office of Official Communication or something like this. I forget all the names… but he was a really cool guy. I never know if I am supposed to say people’s names or not…

This place was designed by French architect Paul Andreu. It’s one of a variety of internationally-designed structures in Beijing. Being a lover of wild architecture, I’m glad China has brought in so many different creative forces to work on these things… It’s always a joy to capture them the in a way that would make the architect proud.

You can probably get a sense of the sheer size of this thing by looking off into the distance on the right. It’s big enough inside to have it’s own weather system! You can kind of see some clouds and water vapor forming there in the upper reaches…

Are you missing out on my interesting newsletter?  It’s free and a very pretty thing to do to your inbox!

Also, for you techno-people like me out there, you gotta see the way this new Newsletter Signup widget works.  It’s so cool… I’m not even sure how it works!  But it shows you a custom video with how to confirm the newsletter.  In testing, I notice it shows a different video if you are using gmail or another client!  Amazing.

Besides that little techno-feat, you get all kinds of other goodies in the newsletter:

• Any upcoming news, events, or plans about Stuck In Customs, so you can be the FIRST to know!
• A collection of fun links that I find/post on Twitter, neat finds, and other things to inspire you.
• Advanced secret links to upcoming reviews so you can be the first to see and provide feedback! !! This is a cool one, eh?
• A review of the latest, most interesting photos.
• A nice, compact, beautiful email that you can share with your family and friends. These are just the sort of pretty emails that can make you popular in your email circle o’ friends.

New Video – The Moments Between – Tokyo Dream

I really enjoy making these short movies, and here is my latest release. My goal is to release two more movies in the next two months… I hope you enjoy them!

Wondering how they are made? I used a very affordable Casio Camera, and there is a lot more info on the “Stuck In Motion” page. The music bits here are from the great Patrick O’Hearn – go buy his stuff! The track in this video is “Northwest Passage”.

Review in Germany

There’s a nice review of the HDR Video Tutorial on a German site called Fotografr. Of course, it helps if you read German. Danke!

New Video Tomorrow!

I’ll release the next Stuck In Motion video tomorrow… get ready! Tell your friends! 🙂

Daily Photo – Horses Aloof

Speaking of the HDR Workshop, I believe I edited this photo during the London Workshop. There is a portion of time when I select a RAW photo to convert into an HDR image, and this was the one I chose. I had never processed it before, and I really like doing these live in front of people. I talk out loud so that people can hear my thought processes. Inevitably, there are problems, but this is what I like about this format. I know that photography and post-processing is basically just navigating around one problem to the next. Maybe people think I don’t have problems when I work on these… but I do! And it’s good to see, maybe, how I get around them.

New David DuChemin eBooks!

David has a bunch of eBooks available over on his site… something for everyone! He recently visited Iceland and he’s currently in New Zealand… so we are certainly kindred spirits. He’s got a new book on Iceland and several others that may entice you. Go check out David’s new eBooks… nice little gifts for the holidays!

This Week in Travel

The “This Week in Travel” that I recorded on Sunday is now available for listening! 🙂 If you want links to some of the stuff I talk about (and more) visit the Photography Gadgets page. If you want the others that are recommended by the other guests, visit the This Week in Travel page for this episode.

Subscribe on iTunes | Become a Fan on Facebook | Download the iPhone app | Download

Daily Photo – The Steampunk Horse

I was in London and found this place just after my wife and I had a lovely dinner with Matt Ridley (have you seen his TED Talk on “When Ideas Have Sex”?) Visit my Best TED Talks page to see it… right there at the top! He’s a great guy and his TED speech did not mention why ideas would come together to make a steampunk horse.

We passed a gallery in a nice part of town that was totally dark and mysterious — except for this wonderful creation inside. I could not resist and had to whip out the tripod to make it happen!

Interview in Queenstown Part 1

Mark Stagi from Digital Photo Buzz sent me some interview questions, and I answered them all on video. I split it into two parts because of YouTube upload limitations… and here is part 1! Enjoy!

Daily Photo – The Range at Night

I drove to Glenorchy (a not-bustling suburb of Queenstown) late in the afternoon. After doing a bit of shooting and snacking, I took a perfect little road back to Queenstown. It runs along a long and perfect lake. The sun had dropped to an interesting spot, and I could see the heavens were boiling away… so I pulled over to take this quick shot.

Daily Photo – Carmel in the evening

I took a California road trip up Highway 1 from Los Angeles to San Francisco. On the way is the famous little town of Carmel. It’s right by Pebble Beach, 17-mile drive, and a bunch of other amazing little places. The town is very quaint and cool… a lovely place to walk around and explore with your camera!

This was my last shot of the night. After this, I stopped in a small Italian restaurant to eat some tasties while I edited some photos. This is one of my favorite things to do after a day of shooting… just relaxing… having someone bring me coffee and snacks… headphones on… editing away. Good times!

This Week in Travel Goodie Guide

Later today, I’m a guest on “This Week in Travel”, a popular podcast that’s all about exactly what you think it’s about. Among other things, they asked me to prepare a few photography-related travel-goodies for the holiday season.

Here is the episode!

I have a more full list on my “Favorite Things” page!

New Video Soon!

I’ve spent this weekend working on a new video to release that is the next chapter in the “Moments Between” video from below.  My current plan is to release it on Friday… so get ready!

Daily Photo – Lines of Tokyo

To go with the video theme of the day, here is a new photo in Tokyo.  This was taken near the Akihabara area, not too far from the subway station.

There is a kind of “sterile” feel to a lot of the modern, well-architected areas of Tokyo.  I don’t mind this non-organic sense sometimes, but it is not always comforting.  All of the lines, shapes, and angles make for some fun photography, though!

Daily Photo – Beautiful Feng Huang at night

This was a beautiful and relaxing night for me.

I strolled up and down the banks of this old river-town. All the houses up on stilts were so charming… the little boats motoring around… old ladies still washing clothes deep into the night… young lovers skipping along the opposite bank while I set up for shots…

After a few hours of shooting, I stopped at a small family-run restaurant that overlooked the river. I pulled out my sketch pad and started drawing the scene around me for a few hours while the nice mom inside brought me all kinds of mysterious hot foods, teas, and little cookies. It was a very peaceful and nice night…

Five People List – Thanks Scott!

Scott Bourne made a post yesterday called “Five People Who Made Great Impact on the Photography Industry in 2010“. He must have made mistake there on #4! But thank you very much anyway… even if that was a draft list that you accidentally published!

How to Zoom in to Maximum Size and EXIF

Two regular questions I get revolve around how to see the maximum size, and how to get all the ISO/Aperture/Shutter speed info. I don’t mind repeating the answers from time to time.

To get the maximum (or any) size, simply click on the image below (for example), and then click on the tiny “O” (For Original) at the top.

To get the EXIF photo data, click on the lightbox version (then you see this) over the photo and look for the Blue “i” that appears on the right – click that little thing!

Daily Photo – The Chinese Technopolis

How boring does the “Beijing Planning Museum” sound? Very!

How surprisingly awesome is the “Beijing Planning Museum”? Very!

The museum features a few giant city-models. And I mean GIANT! You can get a sense of the size of this thing by looking at the waist-height red rope around the outside. Not only is this a fully detailed model, but each of the buildings light up individually in a cascade, corresponding to a dreamy Chinese voiceover. The voice describes each sector of the city and what makes it unique. There is music playing in the background that I could have sworn was the same music as “Jurassic Park”, so that was a very strange addition to the scene.

Social Media Awards

Last year, I lost to Gowalla.  Damn that awesome company.  But maybe this year, we can pull it off!  The nominations round has started…  Should you care to support the cause, come Comment on Trey’s Nomination.  Or, you can even nominate others…  just don’t nominate Gowalla.  Or they might take away all my awesome badges.

Too Many Burning Man Photos!

You all know that I normally only post one new photo a day. But I have so many Burning Man photos, that I’m likely to cluster them on occasion… otherwise I’ll never get through them all before the next one!

As usual, to see other photos of a category, just go click on the “Burning Man” at the bottom of the post.

Daily Photo(s) – Exploring Burning Man

Are you looking for something totally unique in this increasingly homogenized world? Try Burning Man!

Look… it’s not for everyone. If you’re kinda right-brained and like to have unexpected stimulation hitting your eyes non-stop for a week, then this just might be the place for you. It’s a nice shock to your artistic self.

I spent the first few days without my camera… just sort of walking around and drinking it all in. I was fairly zombie-like in my wandering. At the same time, I was considering various ways to capture the overall feeling of the place in a series of photos. I don’t usually do this, but I did add a few captions to the photos below in case you want to know more…

Note that all the Burning Man photos do not fall under the Creative Commons license as my other