All the DisneyWorld Photos

If you want to see all my them, click on the Disney World category. After you get to the bottom, click “Previous” to see another batch of 15 or so. I have a lot… and if you love Disney like me, maybe you’ll find a few in there you like.

Daily Photo – The Mystery of the Orient

The biggest mystery here, which you may have guessed by now, is that this is not in the orient at all. This is in the World Showcase area of Epcot. In some ways, I think, Epcot has the least exciting rides and attractions of the four Disney parks in Orlando. But what it lacks in rides, it makes up for in photo ops!

My best suggestion for photographers is the following. First, if you are staying in a Disney resort, then you get special “night hours” at different parks. Be there on the Epcot night, and make sure you are as far away from the exit as possible when the park closes. Then, you can take your time walking back to the entrance and take as many photos as you like! Everything is well lit, there is nobody around, and security doesn’t even seem to mind. No one rushes you out… it’s very relaxing and perfect. And, of course, the World Showcase has all sorts of cool buildings, architecture, and landscaping… countless opportunities for great compositions.

I took this photo right outside of a great Japanese restaurant. I forgot the name, but I had some pretty good sushi. I think this place and the California Grill have the best sushi at Disney, if you are into that sort of thing.

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

Nikon 14-24 Review Update

I keep updating the Nikon 14-24 Review as I find good uses for the lens. I always seem to! If you’ve ever been up underneath the Eiffel Tower, then you know how very very wide it is! Anyway, I thought this was a good example of what the lens can do.

Under the Eiffel

This time of night only lasts a fleeting five minutes. So, as a photographer in Paris, it’s a major commitment to get in place for that dire period. There’s never an easy decision, and… after all… it is Paris, so there is no “bad” place to be.

I’m glad it’s a city where many restaurants stay open late. I miss the “normal” dinner time, since those are the prime sunset hours. I usually try to grab a snack around 4 PM to carb-up for a busy shooting session. And then after I eek out every last minute of atmospheric light, I like to go to a late-night restaurant to edit photos and relax a little bit. Okay, actually I relax a lot.

Filed under the categories: France, Nikon D3X, Paris, Travel

Speech at Adobe HQ

Come join me in San Jose! Thanks to the nice people at Adobe, the event is free, so I look forward to meeting you!

I’ve been invited to speak as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series, sponsored by the Advanced Technology Labs at Adobe. The talk is on Feb 24 at 1 PM PDT in the Park Auditorium at 345 Park Ave in San Jose. I’ll be talking about the future-present of photography, post-processing, HDR, and a little bit of everything.

Daily Photo – The Little-Known Submarine Secret Dropoff Location in Lost

What would a week be if I didn’t make arcane references to Lost, Firefly, Arrested Development, Burn Notice, the Simpsons, or Sledgehammer? Well… here goes the weekly quota…

Te Anau is one of the most stunning locations in the world. Located near the distant southern tip of the south island of New Zealand, it’s the home base for countless breathtaking excursions. About two hours from Te Anau is this place at Milford Sound. It’s called a “sound”, but it’s really a fjord. I heard an explanation of why it was not named correctly, but that escapes me now. I’m sure our smart members of the community here that are Kiwis can clear this up for us!

Filed under the categories: Milford Sound, New Zealand, Nikon D3X, Te Anau, Travel

What’s a Roku?

Check the latest prices for a Roku on Amazon — they are cool. They’re little devices that hook up to your television and connect to your wireless internet. You can use them for our channel below, to watch Netflix, to watch rented movies off Amazon, see the TWIT channel, see Geekbeat.TV on Revision 3, and tons of other things.

You might be interested to know that we got rid of cable last year… we just use Roku now.

Announcing our new Roku Screensaver and Channel!

Roku contacted me a long time ago to talk about a partnership. After just a short talk, we quickly decided that people needed a good screensaver for their home televisions! We’ve been working hard with the team at Roku to make a custom Stuck In Customs channel. It’s both a channel where you can see all the best portfolio images by category, or you can set it as a screensaver to randomly show the images. I wanted to get this to people as cheaply as possible, so the subscription cost of 99 cents a month — pretty good!

Here are some photos below. For more information, see the “Roku Channel” page here on the site!

Once it goes full screen, everything is in highdef and looks beautiful. From this page, you can either see the full size image or start a slideshow.

The photos are categorized a few different ways. If you want to see the whole shootin-match, just pick the World Photography category.

And here it is in screensaver mode... hi-def and looking sharp!

The Skeletons at Sunrise

You might have seen this photo before… and I hate to take a photo of it on the television, because it looks so bad on there! It’s hard to take a photo of a photo on a television… and, well, it just didn’t do it justice, so here it is, fit and proper!

Filed under the categories: Travel

Why 3D Doesn’t Work And Never Will

I saw Roger Ebert put up a very interesting article entitled “Why 3D Doesn’t Work and Never Will”. It makes a really good case… I think about this stuff all the time too. I have a disadvantage, since I can’t see 3D anyway, so I don’t really know what I am missing… but I can understand as much as possible… and the article seems to make solid points. Thanks Brainpickings for the link! What do you think?

Daily Photo – The Beachcomber Motel

When I was in San Clemente, I walked up the road to visit the Beachcomber Motel.  Even though I stayed in a friend’s place on the beach, I was getting kicked out the last night.  So I walked up here to check on accommodations.  It looked quite perfect!  I set up to take some photos, and management came out to stop me.  I had to do some fast-talking to let them know I was not a threat.  I have a certain boyish charm at times, but only at times.  In this case, it just barely worked.  I promised I would send the photos after I got them processed, which I finally have.  And here it is.

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

Thanks!  And New Version coming Soon!

A few days ago, I asked if you had media connections to help with 100 Cameras in 1.  And now we have stories on Wired, The LA Times, TUAW, AppAdvice, Toucharcade, and many more!  And this was in addition to the Gizmodo / Kotaku reviews…  Thanks very much! You guys rock!  

This helped us to finally pass Camera+, which is quite an accomplishment!  BTW, I keep advising that you pick up Camera+ too since my friend Lisa made it… support your local internet artist!

Even though these ratings vacillate, you might be interested to know that we are in the top 0.16% of all the 300,000 apps in the store.  Amazing!  In the US, we’ve stayed in the top 10 all week for photography.  For that category in other countries, we hit #3 in the Netherlands, #8 in Australia, #9 in Brazil, #3 in Finland, #8 in France, #4 in Argentina, #5 in Belgium, #7 in India, and #6 in New Zealand!  Thanks countries of the world!  We’re working on some amazing updates with secret surprises… stay tuned.

Oh China, let’s be friends!

As opposed to the stats above, in China, we are a depressing #268. Oh China, why oh why? We’ve been such good friends, and I’ve tried to take such pretty pictures of you, China. Don’t be like that. Maybe I just need a Chinese version of the app, but I’m not sure how to do that.

Even worse, in Russia, we are #310. Was it something I said? Oh China and Russia… I don’t wanna fight… can’t we just be friends?

Daily Photo – The Chinese Mothership

Look at this magical place in Beijing… it’s on the edge of belief.

I could hardly fathom the nature of this place. I expected the lights to appear on the grid with melodic tones a mystical, alien language, like in Close Encounters. But none of that happened… So I just stood there for a long time, thinking about how incredible this place was… and took my time, setting up my system for a fitting photograph.

Remember when we were kids, and we never finished our food, even under the threat of starving children in China? Now, I say to my kids, you better eat your food, or else Chinese children will grow up and create an economic powerhouse. Well too late for that!

This is the amazing National Centre for the Performing Arts, or as I like to say, the 国家大剧院 — I find that rolls of the tongue a bit easier.

Filed under the categories: Beijing, China, Travel

Join me Live Today at 4 PM CST

I’ll be on PhotoNetCast Live today with Dave Wilson and Antonio Marques at 4 PM CST.  That’s 2 PM PT, and all other sorts of times whereever you happen to be.  Just click on that link around that time, and you’ll be in good shape!

Daily Photo – Shakespeare’s Globe Theater

Ever heard of this guy? He wrote plays or something like that?

Now, this is not the original theater, but it is a fully operational new version of it, located right beside the Thames in Central London. I was lucky enough to get a private tour of the facility and it was really cool, as you can see. Everything appears to be pretty authentic, from the thatched roof to the multiple view levels. In fact, it’s exactly how I remember it from Civilization.

The guy that was showing us around said that, after it was first constructed, that veteran British actors scoffed at it, thinking it was more of a tourist attraction than a serious place to act. But that sentiment has changed in recent years, with more and more big names coming to act out the classics. I didn’t get to stay around for a performance, but I think it would have been pretty impressive… the space is very tiny and intimate. And even though it’s a replica and “pretend”, that’s all acting is anyway… so I think everyone could easily get caught up in the moment of it all.

Filed under the categories: London, Nikon D3X, UK

Photography Gadgets, Updated I updated the Photography Gadgets page, and that thing is still a work in progress. I know perfect is the enemy of good… so my usual method is to put up pages while they are still incomplete, and then I iterate on them over time. That page is on its third iteration, but not quite where I want it yet! Part of that page is a “Photography-related Gadgets”, which involve things that are in the orbit of my camera. One cool new thing I added was the Moshi products… There are two on there, and I pictured one to the right. I’ve tried three different iPad cases, and this one is the best.

Moshi iPad Case

Daily Photo – The Inner Museum

This is the Capital Museum in Beijing, and it houses some famous and exquisite pieces. Many of the works were still incomprehensible to me, but it’s nice how there seems to be an international feeling of beauty around different objects.

The lighting was very unique in here, and the layout made for a challenging shoot. Of course I did use a tripod here…I’m not sure it is possible to capture it otherwise.

Filed under the categories: Beijing, China, Nikon D3X

HDR Video Tutorial Giveaway by Chris Pirillo

Hurry and visit Pirillo’s blog to enter! It’s very simple, just “Like” his FB page and leave a comment, and you are entered!

The HDR Video Tutorial has been very popular, and we’ve done a few of these giveaways… I’m glad to drive traffic around to nice guys like Chris!

I met Chris in Dallas when we jumped out of a plane together with the US Army. I also met his dad and we talked for a little while… he was a heck of a nice guy too. I guess, with a dad like that, Chris can’t help but to be so likable. Anyway, if you don’t know who the chap is, then this is a good chance to check out his site.

More from Burning Man

This is my fourth or fifth post that has a collection of these photos – to see the others, click the Burning Man category.

Getting in the Groove

I usually don’t put captions on photos, but I did for my last mini-set of Burning Man photos, so I will here too.

Filed under the categories: Burning Man, Nevada

Calling on your help!

Yesterday, we had great mentions for 100 Cameras in 1 from Kotaku and Gizmodo. More on that below.

I wondered if YOU had any good connections to sites or media that might like to review the app too. I got the Kotaku hookup from a very nice friend, who introduced me to two parties… I really haven’t done anything much to “market” the app yet. I don’t much like blind-emailing people and saying, “Hey please review my app I know you get 5,000 of these per day, but but but…” hehe. Anyway, I don’t like doing that… you know what I mean. Any good introductions would be appreciated… I have a pile of free review download-codes I can send out… our contact information is below, or just use business @stuckincustoms.com. Thanks!

Thanks to Kotaku & Gizmodo!

I’d like to give a big internet bear-hug to Brian Crecente at Kotaku who did this interview. Don’t worry — it’s a very manly bear-hug — the kind where you vigorously slap one another on the back with aplomb in public. Anyway, he’s super busy and he took a lot of time to put together some very thoughtful questions. Even at that, I predicted he would just format the story like question / answer / question / answer… but he went old-school and actually wrote a story!

Kotaku and Gizmodo are related in the Gawker briarpatch, so Gizmodo also picked up the story – thanks to the team over there too. I used to be with Gawker Artists back in the day, and they would randomly show my art when they didn’t have advertising banners. I remember that Gawker contacted me because an angry reader thought I was beating my children because I had an HDR-photo of them in one of the banners. They were gonna call Child Protective Services! (Seriously!)

Under the Louvre

This is a definite no-no land for tripods, so that made me re-double my efforts to make this shot happen under the glass pyramid of the Louvre.

With the sun in my face, there was no way I could make an HDR out of a single RAW, and I knew I needed seven exposures, from +3 to -3 to make it happen. I ran around in circles to save up some bullet-time, and then I quickly unfurled my RRS tripod. It spun and rotated like the Hellraiser cube until I had it perfectly situated. I took my seven shots as quickly as possible before two security cards came over to get me.

I couldn’t Michael-Weston my way out of that one because my French is so bad, so I just slowly folded up my tripod while giving them a knowing grin. I wanted it to be the kind of grin that ate into their souls… but, I think they were just generally annoyed with me and wanted me to hurry the heck up.

Filed under the categories: France, Nikon D3X, Paris, Travel

Best Photos from Japan

When I’m not fighting off mechs in Japanese dating simulations, I’m usually busy taking photos of the environs. If you want to see some of the my best HDR photos in this area, just click the Japan category, and you’l be off and running. You’ll also find photos of Japanese schoolgirls that just might be mechs.

New Video – Seeing the Edge

I put together some of my favorite bits from this technique into this new short video. Enjoy! If you want to see more about this technique, see the “Stuck In Motion” page here on the site.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Tokyo, Travel

New Colormunki Review

I put up a new Colormunki Review here on the site. In short, it’s one of those devices that allows you to calibrate the color on your monitors/laptops/printer to ensure everything is consistent and pure.

Daily Photo – Exploring Medieval Ibiza

I did not know this prior to flying to the little island of Ibiza off the coast of Spain — but I was happy to discover that the old part of the city is an walled medieval town. Awesome! Whenever I see one of those, all I want to do is run around them, like I’m in a the latest Assassin’s Creed, except with a camera instead of a stiletto incognito.

The old part of the city has been turned into galleries, restaurants, and small boutique hotels. The textures and lights are warm and supple. I loved walking around and discovering little parts here and there — it was all especially nice because it was completely unexpected.

Filed under the categories: Ibiza, Nikon D3X, Spain