Stuck In Customs

A longer story…

So I have a nice story here from just a few days ago… geeks will love it… Maybe other people will too… I’ve just processed the photos, and I will sprinkle four of them here below so you can join in the fun.

My plane arrived in the evening, and I went out immediately to start taking photos of the city. Just as I was getting into a groove, I received a text to come over to Neal Stephenson’s house to help build a unique steampunk BBQ Grill. To this, I cannot say no.

So I arrived and then spent about four hours with Neal, Chris Young (master chef who wrote Modernist Cuisine), Nels Peterson (paleontologist++), and a few other people to build a crazy BBQ setup. Neal has this crazy BBQ every year and they try to do something off-the-wall. For this one, instead of spinning the pig over the fire, it was decided that the fire should spin around the outside of the pig.

It was dark when I pulled up just as another car rolled in, fully laden with metal tubing, rails, brackets, and other alloyed oddments. I walked over, and Neal went through a recognition subroutine to figure out if I was a friend or enemy. I barely passed that one and then helped carry in a bunch of strange things. We went through his home out into the backyard where there was a staging area for this creation.

I honestly did not do very much other than carry things and assemble one of the racks to hang the pig. I felt that the two pigs should be in a less “Catholic” position and we should kama-sutra it up, but no one else agreed with me on this point.

But, many hours later, the creation was assembled, and we turned it on to watch the giant columns of metal begin to spin around the central base. It felt a little like a wormhole generator that would enable fully cooked pigs to come into our world.

Then, the next day, when the BBQ officially started… here is a photo of the festivities.

And below is the a photo of the actual creation. You can see the pigs hanging in the middle as the fire spins around the outside. To the right is Chris Young and to the left is Neal Stephenson (who you can also see looking on in the photo above).

There was something new and hypnotic while the fire spun around the pig. It spun for over five hours and many of us just stared. It was kind of a shared experience of meta-strangeness.

I think maybe it was so foreign to our pleistocene brains. We’re just not used to seeing fire spin around while the meat is still. Or something. I don’t know.. but I’ll never forget how hypnotic the experience was…

In the photo below, Neal looks on once again…

And last is my friend Chris Young getting one of the columns of fire stoked. We filled these with a special kind of obsidian coal that was very tough to light but burned like a French retreat. First, Chris would use a blow torch to get it started, and then he whipped out the old leaf-blower really get the fire going.

He did this to both columns to make sure the temperature was consistent through the vertical structure before they were set into a spinning motion. And, yes, it turns out that it was not that steampunk at all, since these were spun around by a concrete mixer.

http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/Portfolio-The-Best/your-favorites/10668747_AuyBk/1437525185_s4p

5000 Beautiful Sunsets Every Day

Sometimes I feel pressure to get every sunset… Not a bad kind of pressure – just a soft sort of pressure. But then, I forgive myself a little if I don’t get it by knowing that every minute there is a beautiful sunset SOMEWHERE on Earth. I think it would be cool to have a website or app that shows you were the most beautiful sunset is RIGHT NOW… and it shows it to you – wouldn’t that be awesome?

Daily Photo – PCH Sunset

Driving down Highway 1 in California gives you a front stage to the sunset. There’s no bad place to stop, so you can just pull out at the right moment, take a shot, and hop back in the car. It’s so easy — it almost feels like cheating!

I’m thinking about a much longer California trip soon. I may start up in Seattle then drive all the way down to LA, taking my time along the way to explore places for photography. Any spots I should not miss?

Daily Photo – Superquad

Towards the end of the PhotoWalk, we ended up in this amazing area… here is my photo that I took… I think it was one of my last of the evening. Thanks again to everyone that came along 🙂

?????

??iPad????????????????????????????

????

Google+ Community Reminder

Looking for people to circle? See the Stuck In Customs community list!

Daily Photo – Adorable Chinese Girl

So, maybe the full title of this photo should be what I realized after I took the photo: “Adorable Chinese Girl OMG I Think She’s About To Pee On The Street”. But she didn’t. She was just in that position. And her pants are kinda funky. Or maybe those are leg-warmers or something. I don’t know… it’s all confusing. Her mom was right by her, sitting on a set and eating rice. She smiled at me, and was very excited when I was taking a photo. Or maybe she was laughing because she thought it was funny I was trying to take a photo while her daughter was about to go to the bathroom. I really can’t say!

But I did see lots of kids go to the bathroom in the street, on sidewalks, and this sort of thing. Not all the time, mind you, but they would just drop their business right there in the middle of a busy sidewalk.

Do you have a favorite cloud type?

Is this like Barbara Walters asking what kind of tree would you be? Gosh I hope not… But, maybe being someone that looks at the skies a lot, then you might have a particular cloud type that you find particularly appealing?

Daily Photo – Orange Light in Queenstown

I was driving back to the house we rented in Kelvin Heights, a little peninsula that sticks out into the lake, and I saw the potential for this light. I’ve only seen it about a dozen times in my life. It happens when there is a localized area of flat-white clouds but a perfectly clear horizon. It means the sun will dip below the clouds and cast an interesting color up on the bottom of the clouds. The reason this doesn’t usually happen is because an overcast sky will continue on for so many miles that the sun will have no angle of incidence.

Anyway, I got lucky and the prediction came true. I was able to be ready with my tripod just in time.

The Trouble With Tripods

Are you still having trouble with tripods in places… I sure do… but, here’s the question — does it discourage you from trying the next time? It doesn’t discourage me at all. I’m at about a 20% rejection rate, which isn’t so bad… it means I get to use a tripod in 80 out of 100 places I want to. But, if those 20 rejections were too discouraging and I stopped, then I never would have hit those 80 successes.

Daily Photo – The Beautiful Beijing Airport

This is a place where I never had trouble with a tripod. I didn’t need any special permission… everyone just left me alone. I think that in China everyone is basically scared to death of the authorities, so this means the authorities don’t really need to do much in the way of diligent “enforcement.” And, there seemed to be no rules against photography, so it was easy to go hog-wild in this beautiful airport.

This is another good reason to take your tripod with you on the plane… If it is checked down below, then there’s nothing to do but eat Chili’s Express or, the Chinese equivalent, KFC Express. (Yes, KFC is ALL OVER Asia for some reason…but some of you probably know this already!)

The Beautiful Beijing Airport

Photo Information

---

• Date Taken2010-10-04 03:14:32
• CameraNIKON D3X
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time1
• Aperture6.7
• ISO100
• Focal Length19.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+2

More China Background Story

I made a post on Google+ that describes more about the behind-the-scenes of how I got into China… in case you are curious…

Daily Photo – The Towering Rice Field

Once again back in Zhangjiajie. These spires are murder to walk up and down. I thought I was in reasonably good shape, but these things will suck the life out of you!

At the top of one of them, there is this lonely rice field just on the edge of a 1000+ foot drop. The whole place is beautiful, old, and beyond belief.

Another From the Class

We worked on this one during the class (see the Photography Course) as an exercise in composition. Students took their images and saw how many different photos they could make out of it. I saw lots of very nice new compositions that I never though of! When done, they posted their versions to the Clubhouse… and it is still fun to go through there and look at the various versions that are made!

Daily Photo – Grey London in Color

It’s so hard to carry a tripod with a big camera AND an umbrella. The number of ways you can severely pinch yourself must be in the thousands.

There is the right-hand-hold-the-umbrella-and-camera-together method. This keeps the left hand free to zoom, but there is no hand left to secure the ballhead. So, that only kinda works, but you have to do the strange reach-around. It’s about as much fun as using your left hand to get exactly 45 cents out of your right pocket.

Another method is using your neck to secure the umbrella, but that gets out of control very very quickly in the wind.

The last method is usually the one I do — and that is just to let myself get soaked. I feel only a tiny bit miserable, but I can sometimes be so focused that I can push that discomfort away while I’m focused on the photography bit.

Grey London in Color

Photo Information

---

• Date Taken2010-09-14 00:00:00
• CameraNIKON D3X
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time1
• Aperture22
• ISO50
• Focal Length19.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+2

People and Places

So I do love to take photos of people. I got a question on Google+, asking why I don’t take photos of people in Iceland. I guess the biggest reason is there is hardly anyone around! Sometimes I go days without seeing people… As opposed to China, for example, where there are people around everywhere!

Daily Photo – Colors in Beijing

It was pretty late in the evening and I was tired after shooting all day long. My assistant and I stopped at a tea house along the banks of a little lake to relax. We had a very nice serving girl that kept bringing us more and more food and drinks. I think she expected us to eat in a dainty way, but we most certainly did not.

She had a pleasant disposition about her, so I asked if I could take a quick photo.