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Daily Photo – The Lantern in the Streets of Old China

My time in China was winding down, and I took a flight back to Beijing for a few more days of exploration. There is so much to see in the old city that my month there was still not enough! And on one of these final nights, I decided to visit this very old section of the city.

It’s very well maintained with bright, fresh red paint, restored ancient lanterns, ornate windows, and the like. And inside many of the ornate windows are all sorts of antiques and old Chinese curios. I went into several, and now I am kicking myself for not buying more stuff. They had a bunch of bundles of old Chinese photos. I can’t figure out why I didn’t buy them… I think, now, that I was just overwhelmed by all the stuff that was inside. But next time when I go back, I’ll get a few bundles and bring them home to hand out at some event! That seems like a good idea.

Filed under the categories: Beijing, China, Travel

Okay, Silver Efex 2 is Even Better

I mentioned my Silver Efex Pro Review recently and how I’ve been playing with the new version lately. I made this photo below the other night during the Webinar, and I’m happy to report that the new version is even better than the last! As you guys know, I don’t post a lot of B&W stuff, even though I do make a lot of them. Maybe I should post more?

Daily Photo – The Barcelona Airport

This is another reason I like to get to airports early. Not only do I hate being rushed, but I like to take time to explore with my camera. Well, I guess that only is in the case where the airport happens to be particularly beautiful, like the one here in Barcelona.

I always start out extremely rushed, because I picture security closing down on me from every angle. So, my first shot is usually rushed and not perfectly centered. Then, if the guards don’t gang-tackle me like I’m streaking at Yankee Stadium, then I keep adjusting my position and the camera until things are more and more aligned and composed to my satisfaction. This one was even a little bit tilted, but I fixed that bit with the crop tool later in Photoshop (as people saw).

Filed under the categories: Barcelona, Nikon D3X, Spain, Travel

New and Free eBooks Available

We have some new eBooks over at FlatBooks.com. There’s also a free one you get just for signing up for the newsletter, which we only send out about every two months or so. Enjoy!

Daily Photo: The Beautiful Space Shuttle Blooms Inside a Cloud

This is a 600mm lens, the typical large type of lens that many photographers use when taking space shuttle photos. Note that I can only hold a lens like this for five seconds before I scream in agony and curl into a fetal ball of pain.

(Edit: Welcome NPR, Today Show, Gizmodo, MSNBC and others for enjoying the shuttle photos and visiting – enjoy your stay!)

Staying awake for two days before getting this shot made my nerves a little frayed. As the countdown got inside the final two hours, I could feel myself in a strange mix of extreme fatigue and excitement. It’s a very strange feeling! And since this is the first launch I had ever seen, all my spidey-senses were tingling. This was also the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavor, so there was an extra layer of meaning on top of everything else.

I arrived right at 3 AM to set up my tripod (which, surprisingly, I did not use for this shot, but I’ll get to that in a minute). I then went into the press room to get everything organized for the upcoming event. I was also still spending time editing together the video for the webinar, since I know a lot of people miss the live version and like to download it after the event. So by the time the actual event rolled around, I was really starting to feel tired.

And here is the 50mm lens I actually used to get the shot. /me lurves it. This photo is from maestropastelero (click photo for link), creative commons, on Flickr

Even though I had my Nikon D3X set up on a tripod with my 28-300 lens, I actually shot this picture with my 50mm prime lens on my Nikon D3S! Everything did go according to plan, and I had run through the routine a few times before the launch. The plan was to fire away on my main body during the first 15 seconds or so. At that point, the D3X starts to have bufferring problems, so I switched to my Chewbacca-bandolier D3S. I pulled it up into a vertical orientation and rapid-fired just as the shuttle tore into the clouds.

As soon as the Endeavour worm-holed into the cloud layer, the strange staccato-bass of torn air came skipping across the water into the press area. The sound was not at all what I expected, but it was awesome dot com.

Filed under the categories: Florida, NASA

A Super Long Day!

I woke up and jumped in the car immediately to head to NASA. I spent most of that on the little adventure I describe below, then came back to the hotel to run the webinar. After that, I worked on the photo below before editing together the video (which is still going on). And then I’ll begin a long upload before leaving just after 2 AM to get to NASA at 3AM. I gotta get my tripod set up in the perfect place for the launch that will happen a few hours later. No sleep… just rockets and photo-editing… a marathon of fun! But I’m doing it for Stu, Gordon, Abe, Scott, Cliff, and all my other friends like you guys that couldn’t be here with me.

Daily Photo – The Mighty Rocket Awaits

Today I had a great day at NASA. I’ve come back to the space coast in Florida to see the space shuttle Endeavor blast off, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Around noon, I was invited out with a group of other Twitter peeps to see the RRS Rollback event. This is the slow-motion but exciting time when they peel away to the Rotating Service Structure to reveal the shuttle. It was so awesome that I almost forgot to send a tweet.

And, below, you can see a zoom in I took at 300mm. It shows one of the workers on the scaffolding making some final preparations for the launch.

This lens has quickly become one of my favorites. Some people complain that it is not very fast, but I don’t notice these things since I’m usually on a tripod. You can see more at the Nikon 28-300 Review.

Filed under the categories: Florida, NASA, Nikon D3X

Last Day To Register!

Remember that all-expenses paid trip to Austin to go shoot an abandoned power plant with me? Entering for the prize (and registering for webinar) ends in 24 hours.

To enter, just leave a comment here. We’re up to over 250, so be sure to get your name in the hat! Don’t forget it also comes with a free new copy of Photoshop CS5.

Daily Photo – The Midnight Wonder Garden

Whenever I am in a place like this, I try to linger as late as possible so I am the last one remaining. There are occasionally other people around, but I really prefer to be by myself. I enjoy listening to music, relaxing, and walking around to find the interesting angles.

These are the lower gardens of Kiyomizu-dera in one of the older parts of Kyoto. I’ve been to this area multiple times, and I try to go at different times of the day and different seasons. I’d love to be lucky once and catch it in the snow… I suppose that would mean I need to go in the winter or something.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Kyoto, Nikon D3X

Last Month’s Facebook Fan Page Impressions

I just saw the stats for the past month on our Facebook page.  It’s really crazy how much traffic that place gets.  Since there are so many people there, let me know if you have any ideas for fun things we can do there.  I still keep this blog as the “main cruise ship” of my online life, but the FB format does have a few nice things going for it…  It’s seems like another great way for you guys to meet one another on Facebook too!  Make new friends with each other and stuff… that is cool.

Suggestions from Locals

You would think I have a very sophisticated way of picking out hotels and places to stay, yes? Well, no, I don’t. I wish there was a bullet-proof system. I’ve tried many websites and I sometimes get good suggestions, but you never really know, you know?

I’m often most happy when I get a suggestion from a clever local person. This was the case with the Post Ranch Inn below. I was at the EG Conference in Monterey, and I mentioned to a fellow there that I was going down to Big Sur for a few days. He immediately recommended this place, and it was a slam dunk.

I mean, I guess I do have a blog and I can just ask you guys… maybe I will in the future. You guys really know a bunch of great places, and I should use this as a resource more… also, it ends up being valuable to other people too, since there does end up being a lot of cross-pollination as a lot of us travel around from time to time.

Daily Photo – The Post Ranch Inn at Dusk

How awesome is this room? Each of the rooms here at the Post Ranch Inn (nice time-lapse on that website, eh?) are cool, so I don’t think this one was special in that regard. In fact, I have another photo I processed last night of one of the little tree-house-rooms I saw on the way to dinner.  I’ll post that one soon…

Whenever I check into a hotel, I always feel like a dork because I say, “Hello, you don’t know me but I’m a photographer, so having a really good view at sunrise is important.” I don’t think this ever amounts to a hill of beans, except for here! The nice lady that set me up said that the mountain-view had the best light for photography. She said this with such authority that I did not question it! And she was right…

I took this one evening at dusk before walking up the path to an amazing dinner.

Filed under the categories: Big Sur, California, Nikon D3X

Silver Efex Pro 2

I’ve been very slow in trying out the new Sliver Efex Pro 2. I have my old Silver Efex Pro Review up on the site still, which is still pretty awesome. I just downloaded the new one yesterday and have been playing with it. It seems slick so far, and I’ll try to get some new screenshots and update that thing.

Daily Photo – The Wheel

Remember that great London PhotoWalk? I’m still processing photos from that event! There was one point where I climbed up on a low wall to get a shot of the ferris wheel. Getting up on the wall wasn’t too tough — the tough part was setting up the three legs of my tripod so they were pretty stable.

It’s been great fun (and kind of strange) to have hundreds of people also processing these images and posting them in the forums. I get to see many of interpretations of this same scene. There are so many different versions of the colors, the composition, the sharpness, and even more. This is very interesting to see how people take the same source files and make something that is interesting to them.

Filed under the categories: England, London, Nikon D3X, Travel, UK

New Video for 100 Cameras in 1

Daily Photo – The Chocolate Shoppe

Some regulars know that I’m into gourmet chocolate. This is both good and bad because sometimes when I show up to events, people bring me chocolate from all over the world! And then, I get back to my hotel room, and I’m heavily laden with chocolate… and then the post-midnight haze sets in while I’m editing photos, and I start thinking, “Hmmm, I wonder what that 37% cocoa from Liberia tastes like…” And then it’s a very slippery slope.

Here’s another that I processed the other evening while people looked on… This is a chocolate shop in London that I found by accident called the Rabot Estate. I bought a lot of stuff here, and it didn’t last very long. I also had a very nice cup of drinking chocolate while flipping through some chocolate books in the back. I found out there is a chocolate resort somewhere in the Caribbean.. it’s like a regular Caribbean resort that also happens to be on a cocoa plantation. SIGN ME UP.

(EDIT – Thanks to M in TX in the comments below, you can see details on the Hotel Chocolat in St. Lucia here)

Filed under the categories: England, London, Nikon D3X, UK

New Video Interview

I think you’ll enjoy this one… I did this with Dane Sanders who has interviewed all kinds of people. You can pop over to his website to see even more. I like Dane a lot, and you’ll get a pretty good sense of him in the video too. We talked about all sorts of stuff, and I put a little guide just below the video in case you want to jump around.

Beginning – About the NASA trip

8:15 mark - HDR and some introductory stuff

12:30 mark - Talk about balance of photography, life, and business

28:00 mark - The internet is about to boom.. digital art as a cultural influence… room for us all to grow together.

31:20 mark - Competition and how everyone can win (and, so, it’s not really competition)

39:00 mark – Creating photos to be accepted by other photographers and how to use your own unique life experience to create.

48:00 mark - Burning Man and my artistic approach

53:30 mark - Someone in chat asks to see my t-shrt, and then we talk about my future of content creation

Daily Photo – the Silent Temple of Zhangjiajie

Here’s another photo that I worked on during last night’s webinar class. It was a tough one! I was going through many different examples, and this was a good example of one of those mixed-light situations. It’s so easy and wonderful to experience in person, but so difficult to capture otherwise.

I took this in the middle of a serious trek in Zhangjiajie, deep in the southern part of China. It was one of the hardest single-day treks of my life. This part in the lowland forest was not too tough because it was relatively flat. There were little path problems here and there, but nothing too major. Most of the problems involved walking up and down these bitches. I probably should not call them that, but, honestly, when you are walking up on down them, it’s one of the words that keeps popping into your mind.

In a single day, I walked up and down those things twice, each time passing through these lowland forests… this was the calm before the storm of the ascent, and this little temple brought me some temporary peace.

Filed under the categories: China, Nikon D3X, Travel, Zhangjiajie

The EG Program

At the EG Conference, they give everyone a unique program and a set of specialized playing cards, each adorned with customized art. Their team takes all the presenters and portrays them in some kind of a scene. For example, last year they did “movies”, and this year they did “fine art.” Anyway, you can thumb through their program and see if you can find me! (If you are mega bored…)

One other cool thing about the playing cards is that people often get “special” one-time cards in there that are prizes. Most prizes are very unique and are offered by one of the speakers. The one I traded for ended up being a balloon ride with Jonathan Trappe, one of the other speakers there. Know who he is? Ever hear of that guy that started tying balloons to his office chair until it took off? That’s him! I don’t know where we’ll do our balloon ride yet… I’m trying to talk him into Myanmar.

Daily Photo – The Prismatic Cathedral

In the webinar, I gave people a small set of images for homework. This is the second of the two sets (the first I posted yesterday). I didn’t mean for both to be from Spain, but I guess they are! Anyway, I thought it was kind of fun for people all over the world to be processing my images while I am processing them… kind of strange but cool. I will try to post things on a regular basis as we work on them together.

Filed under the categories: Barcelona, Nikon D3X, Spain, Travel

Giveaway and Feedback

Thanks you guys so much for the good feedback on the Webinar. P.S. Don’t forget to reply on that thread if you want to enter to win the grand prize.

It was fun to start it on Mother’s Day, and we were able to give away a Drobo to Celia from TN. She sent Andrea a note that said, “This was such a surprise ending to the 1st class. This is the cherry on top of my already wonderful Mother’s Day. I look forward to making great use of the Drobo. The Stuck In Customs crew did a GREAT job on the first in the series of the webinar classes. I am looking forward to 8 more great classes.”

It’s not too late to join us! www.StuckInCustoms.com/webinar

Daily Homework: Distant Rocks Off Ibiza

I gave the class 138 of my original RAW photos, right out of the camera. Their assignment was to begin working with these ones off Ibiza. I made this during class, so I wanted to go ahead and post it here. BTW, if you’re having trouble logging into the Clubhouse to get the files, be sure to contact support@stuckincustoms.com.

I took photos all throughout the sunset, before and after. I visited this spot 3 different times. Of the three times, this was one of the best. There was about a quarter-mile strip of beach and rock, all of which had good angles. So I kind of worked my way back and forth as the light changed…

Filed under the categories: Ibiza, Nikon D3X, Spain, Travel

Great Prize Bundle – Thanks Photomatix!

Here’s a fun prize! This is open to all that have registered for the Photography Webinar. It starts tonight, but you can still join even up to a week late and just download the classes you missed!

• Grand Prize: All Expenses Paid Trip to Austin to shoot an abandoned power plant with me – Thanks Photomatix for this prize
  • Plane, +Hotel (2 nights), +Car, +$100 in meals!
    • Note: Plane allotment covers anything below $750.  If you are overseas and want to make up the difference, then feel free to enter below!
• Bonus Prize: Photoshop CS5 – I have another new copy I’ll give you when you arrive here in Austin.
• To Enter: Leave a comment below!  People with more than one comment are disqualified.
• Eligible: You must be registered for the Photography Webinar
• Contest Ends May 15th at midnight CST. I’ll select a random winner and announce on May 16.
• Questions? Contact support@stuckincustoms.com

And, of course there are many other prizes as well, such as a New Drobo every class. Pop over to the Webinar page to see them all listed out.

Daily Photo – The Megahangar at NASA

Here is a zoom-in of the image below to give you a sense of the size of this beast.

Imagine a giant skyscraper, but hollow and filled with people making rockets.  That’s what the VAB is.  To really get a sense of the size of this thing, look at the outline of the man standing in the distance, his body backlit by the door.

The VAB, or Vehicle Assembly Building, is the worlds largest single-story building, and it’s where NASA assembles many of the rockets, including the mighty Saturn V.  It’s also the tallest building in the US that’s not in a downtown area.   It’s situated at Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center, and it’s awesome dot com.

The thing is so big that it even has its own weather system.  In fact, on humid days it can even rain inside the building!  In my photo below, you are really only seeing part of it.  Off to the right, they are fueling up the Atlantis for its upcoming mission.  Staring through the girders from another angle, you can easily see the giant orange tank going through its pre-launch ordeal.

Getting into this place was very difficult.  I felt privileged to even get through the various security screenings and get the governmental approval to go inside.  They let in little groups of us from the Tweetup, and I have to thank Stephanie Schierholz for making it all happen.  It’s one of the mysterious places on earth I’ve always wanted to visit, so I was very excited to be inside.  My next goal is to get back inside and get up higher… perhaps even get in while they are prepping the next rocket.

I have many more shots of this building that I’ll be sharing in coming weeks and months… you guys know how I like to keep these threads and stories open for a long time!

Filed under the categories: Florida, NASA, Orlando, Travel