Stuck In Customs

Things you don’t see

So, I’m always taking photos… usually more significant ones in a grand scale… I spend all day making these… but maybe I will start sprinkling in other little bits from time to time… like this one.

Daily Photo – Alone in a Foreign Taxi on a Rainy Night

Many of my travel nights end with a taxi ride back home. I’m usually exhausted after a long day. I may have a snack or a drink that I pick up from a little store… munching away in the back seat… my eyes dart this way and that… not used to moving so fast… and I see little things like this.

SmugMug Video

Did you all see the cool SmugMug video on the SmugMug Review page? Maybe you missed it last month… if so, it’s worth a look!

Daily Photo – Mystery Location – guess guess guess!

Well, the hint is that this is in Beijing. You guys are all so good at finding these secret spots that I probably didn’t even have to give you that hint!

If you go towards cyborg…

What part will you replace first? Would you replace an eye with an awesome cyborg-eye that can zoom and stuff? Or would you get cyborg-ears that can hear as well as a dog? It’s kind of a silly question, but I think many of us will have that option in 15 years or so…

The Cyborg Fabrication Plant

This comes from a cool area of Beijing in the CBD. It’s not really where they make cyborgs in China. I don’t know where that place is…

YouTube Channel Reminder

Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel so you get to see videos first! It’s recently updated… enjoy!

Daily Photo – Pink Mountains During Morning Sunrise

Te Anau is a great little town down in the southern fjord area of New Zealand. It’s sort of the stopping-off point for Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound. It’s also a great home base for photography, because there are countless things to see within just a short drive. I woke up early one morning to drive out towards Doubtful Sound and I saw this scene in my rear-view mirror.

The Hameau de la Reine – Better than Disney World?

You know how Disney makes super-perfect versions of everything? How everything is too-good-to-be-true in a wonderful fantasy escapism kinda way? I was thinking this place below was better than anything the Disney Imagineers could do… and I was wondering if you all have found other little magical spots that are the same way.

Daily Photo – Tiny House in France

So, Versailles is a monstrously huge place. I’m not sure how you could see everything in a day. I chose to concentrate this trip out in the royal gardens, and a confusing walk got me into this place. It’s not exactly secret, but I didn’t know about it until I walked up upon it!

It is called “The Hameau de la Reine”, and is generally known as the Queen’s Hamlet. It was built for Marie Antoinette between 1785 and 1792. It is lovely, and this is only one of the many little places I captured there… more soon!

Thanks again Google Zurich

I do have a funny little story from the Zurich offices. We did a Google+ hangout from one of their special conference rooms. It was called “SkyNet”, and halfway through the hangout, the windows shades started to automatically close. It was really eerie and I made a joke about SkyNet, and there was nervous laughter behind me.

Daily Photo – The Secret Google Chilling Vat

On the tour around the cool Zurich offices, Brian White took me into this watery oasis. It is where euro-Googlers come to nap when they need a brain-break. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine them slinking around in here while wearing trendy euro-clubbing clothes.

There were soft water-sounds wafting about, and everything was very zen. You can choose whatever sleeping arrangement you like: the porcelain tub filled with red foam cubes, the leathery massage chair that doesn’t ask questions, or many more..

Why Twisty Roads?

Why do we like looking at twisty roads? I would love it if I could find a psychological analysis of this… there must be some reason…

If anything, I think it might be related to that other larger phenomenon I have mentioned before. That idea that our pleistocene-savannah brains like to see: fresh water (survival), trees (shelter), open plains (predators), vast skies (weather), and paths (game or human habitation). It may just be related to that last one.

Daily Photo – The Long and Twisty Road

I lament I can’t remember exactly where this is in Iceland. I think it was up by lake Myavatn, but I’m not totally sure.

That word Myavatn is related to little mosquitoes. I wondered why it had that name until about 5 AM one day. There were millions… and I mean millions of mosquitoes that came out of nowhere! It was one of those weather-things were the temperature is just perfect and they get up and go crazy for a few hours before settling down again. I had to retreat into the car mostly for reasons of sanity!

Slowly getting through the Switzerland shots!

This batch is taking me a long time… plus there has been a lot of trouble along with a Drobo problem that gave me the blues… that slowed me down… and made me drop my faith in the Drobos one notch… I’m still using them, but I hold my breath a little more to be honest.

Daily Photo – Soft Zurich at Night

These slow-moving huge rivers make for some very nice reflections.

With HDR there is a problem of “ghosting” which is when the various frames show different things. I usually leave the water alone when it gets ghosted because it has sort of an impressionistic feel to it, I think. In a sense, it gives the “impression” of water, which is somewhere between a photo and our memory.

In China

Well now I’m deep in China. I think it is my fourth or fifth time here. This time I’m going to visit many of the old haunts as well as try some new ones. As usual, if there are suggestions, let me know! 🙂

Daily Photo – Boy and Grandfather at Tiananmen Square

I was walking through Tiananmen on a white-out cloud day taking photos of people. I had on my earphones and was kind of drifting in and among the crowd. It’s a bit like being in a movie when you do this… anyway, I’m sure you’ve heard me mention it before, so I won’t go into details. It’s often a very nice way to make things timeless… to separate people and objects from their place and time.

These two were on the ground wrestling and having fun. I squatted about 15 feet away to take a photo, and they were most delighted!

How Mainstream is Photography?

I’m really in-the-bubble, so I can’t be objective about this. I’m normally good at being very objective about things, but I know if you are a hammer, everything you see is a nail. I see this all the time with people with hobbies or passions. Like, for example, if you are really into veganism, then suddenly you are able to find all this stuff around that supports your world view. You know what I mean…

Daily Photo – An Awesome Spot for a Wine Bar

I was over taking photos of that monstrous church over there before walking home. Luckily (I don’t always do this), I looked over my shoulder as I was walking down this little road with the wine bar. It seemed like kind of a cool scene, so I set up to take photos.

Naturally, people always come over and ask what I am doing. It is very confusing to many people that someone would actually like to take a photo of all this. Sometimes I feel like photography is getting very mainstream and everyone is doing it, but then again, I see very few people out doing stuff like this. And, I guess it makes it even more niche if all these people are coming over trying to figure out what I am doing.