On Google+ ! Watch my Google+ Stream or — I will also embed a player here below as soon as I can.

Filed under the categories: Travel

Incredible Asian Airports

If it’s wrong and racist to say that the Asians can build the best airports in the world, then I don’t want to be right. What’s the deal? How can they kick such airport ass? I don’t know… but I do appreciate it…

Daily Photo – Airports in China

This shot was taken further inside the Beijing (PEK) airport as you are approaching the gate. I kept my tripod as carry-on here for a few reasons. First, so I could take photos in the airport. Second, so I would have it at landing just in case my bag was lost! That happened in Argentina once and I haven’t repeated that mistake since…

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

New Followers

Google+ has been crazy lately. I broke 200,000 followers (see SocialStatistics.com and there are all kinds of new people discovering this kind of photography, which is pretty exciting. I can barely keep up with it all… I did start a post to have people write a little bit about themselves. It capped out at 500 comments very quickly. But you can see all sorts of people on there… very interesting to see the volume and variety!

Introduce Yourself!

Since I did it there, I thought I should do it here too! I know MANY of you by now, obviously… and I think the rest of the community here has gotten to know you a bit through your comments as well. But, why not take this opportunity to say hello and tell us a little about yourself. Feel free to include links to your website, your blog, your google+, or whatever you like!

Daily Photo – Boston at Sunset

Boston is great, and I am sad I’ve only spent a short amount of time there. On this evening, I walked along the waterfront here to look at all the various angles and light levels. They were all good! That’s a sign of a good city when it is hard to take a bad photo of it!

Filed under the categories: Boston, Massachusetts, Nikon D3X, Travel

Huge YouTube Live Hangout Tonight!

See my Google+ Profile for more!

Come watch live tonight at 7 PM PT and 10 PM PT. Google+ is getting me a YouTube Live channel, so I am beyond excited… We will be discussing photography with all sorts of people — it’ll be great!

Just before the event starts, I’ll try to embed a live viewer here. In case it doesn’t work, just check my Google+ stream and you’ll see it there.

Amazing time with Tom

So if some of you follow me on Google+, you might have noticed I’ve gotten to be pretty good friends with Tom Anderson. Remember Tom from MySpace? He’s the guy that was your first friend on there. He eventually sold the company to Murdoch for $580 million. Since then, he’s been doing all sorts of things, but when Google+ got started, we both ended up in the Top 25 list. We got to be friends through there. I liked his clever writing and he liked my photos… Since then, he joined me at Burning Man and then for a week down in the south of China and we discovered a panoply of things we like about one another. Tom’s become very interested in photography, so it was a great time we had together down there… exploring this old town and photography together.

Daily Photo – The Ancient Town of Lijiang

This was a very long exposure — about five minutes or so. I did this so I could help make most of the people disappear from the scene. It also had a nice side-effect down in the river. People would light candles and float them downstream, and the path they followed came out as little golden streaks.

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

Always Refining

I went back and read my previous Top 5 Tips here, and I realized a few of them could be improved… and I also rewrote everything… This is one of the good things about having a blog — I can always change my mind like a woman. (I see the benefits, now).

5 More Tips for Photographing People

I hope they help!

1) If you prefer to take photos of people as they are acting naturally, go ahead and take the photo before they notice you. You are a photographer, and this is you. You capture life… if you see something interesting whether it is a landscape, a pile of peaches, or a person that strikes your fancy, go ahead and do it. If you like and it is convenient, you can always go show them the photo after you are done. I do this whenever it makes sense, and I have a nice little interchange with the person.

2) Keep an extra camera ready for people shots. When walking the streets, I normally have my “big” camera ready to go for city landscape shots. My tripod is on. My wide-angle is on. It’s in that “mode.” If I am going to have to switch lenses, it will take forever, and the moment will be lost. So, I carry a second camera on a sling around my shoulder for people shots. On that camera, I have an 85mm or 50mm prime lens. Now, you don’t have to have this exact setup by any means, but having ANY kind of second camera for people shots is recommended.

2b) I find that the 85mm prime keeps me outside something I call the radius of intimacy. That is, when you use a 50mm, you are so close that people often stop acting naturally, unless they are a professional model or a natural thespian.

3) If they ARE likely to notice you, be confident and deliberate, softly asking permission with your eyes. This is a very subtle and hard thing to explain. I usually raise my eyebrows while I raise my camera, clearly indicating, “I’m about to take a photo. Everything is okay.” If they don’t want you to, they will make it clear. Usually, they say it’s just fine. People like to be thought of as interesting.

4) If they are very close, I ask permission out loud. Often times, I don’t want them to pose… so I say something (smiling!) like, “You look very interesting — can I take a photo?” Once they say yes (98% of the time they do), I usually ask them not to pose and carry on about their business. Then I start taking a bunch of photos and enjoy the pressure of capturing the moment.

5) Don’t be shy! If you feel overly shy, it may be a larger indication that you are letting fear motivate you rather than the opportunities that life provides. So, if you feel doubt or fear, just try to channel me and be brave and forthright.

Daily Photo – Old Woman in Beijing

I spotted this old woman walking along the outside of the Forbidden City. Just like above, I took photos without any hesitation before she noticed what was going on. I shared the photo with her after, and we had a nice little moment.

Filed under the categories: Beijing, China, Nikon D3S, Travel

All calm in London, I assume

There was all that media stuff about a month ago… and I know we have many people here that are from London. I guess they would be good people to ask how things are there… I assume the media scared a lot of people and whatnot…but I wondered what the current situation was like.

Daily Photo – Walking Through London

There are many nice things to see and do all over… It’s one of those cities that when you’re doing one thing — you’re pretty sure that you are missing something else! And it’s that same way with this fleeting sunset… the light was great almost everywhere… and I did run around quite a bit to see how many compositions I could squeeze into the fleeting time. My friend Scott Kublin was with me, running up and down the other side of the street while I was on this one.

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

My memory fails

I think my memory is most excellent, except for the times I forget things, and I generally forget about those too, so that makes this whole objective analysis impossible.

Daily Photo Mystery – Is this France or Spain?

Okay you guys… help me out here. I just can’t remember where this is. I know I have France tags in the photo, but that may have been a mistake. Part of me things it was Spain. I was sick while I was there, but I was still out shooting all the time, running my body into the ground. I think this is one of the reasons my memory is failing me… or something.

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

Live Hangout – Sunday 5 PM ET (2 PM PT)

Come watch the live video hangout from my Google+ account or on Keithbarrett.tv on Sunday at 5 PM ET. We’ll have on Gordon Laing, Jeremy Cowart, Thomas Hawk, Lotus Carroll, and more!

Daily Photo – Thunderdome – Blood on the Sand

I was only partially injured while getting this photo from the wild sands of Burning Man.

A group tenderly called the “Death Guild” erected a Thunderdome in the desert city here at Burning Man. I was riding home on my customized Mad Max bike (thx for making it for me +Cliff Baise !), and I saw hundreds converging on the Thunderdome for a massive fight. Screaming hordes started climbing the super-structure to get a closer look. By the time I arrived, the observers were 10 deep on all sides, everyone crushing in to get a view of the big fight.

I jumped off my bike, grabbed my tripod, D3X, and 14-24 lens. I ducked down and crawled through legs clad in leather and spikes to get just inside.

There were latex-clad women with billy clubs and spiked cudgels roaming the perimeter, keeping people from coming inside. I gave one of more severe-looking gals the international nod of, “Hey, everything is cool, let me stay here – I’m here with purpose.” This is a hard look to communicate with words, but I have perfected it through hundreds of iterations. Anyway, I settled down low to the ground.

Heavy metal music started blaring and the master-of-ceremonies-in-leather came in to announce the combatants. The screams of the fans mixed with the music in an aggressive cacophony. People mashed harder into my backside as another climber used the legs of my tripod to launch himself up into the super-structure.

I was rained upon by bits of rock, sand, and occasional strange fluids while the combatants got locked into their flying harnesses. These were complex bungee-systems designed to let them jump and fly in any direction. It seemed the only inevitability was that they harnesses would get slung around one another in a death-spiral where the fighters would just wail away at one another until one gave out.

I finally got everything set up (+1 EV, f/4, 14mm, ISO 1600, with shutter at 1/20th of a second) and fired away as they backed up then flung themselves at one another. It was brutal and the crowd was going absolutely crazy. Even more debris rained down on me from above as the crowd jammed me more from behind and above. I gathered a series of shots, watched more of the amazing desert violence, then crawled out, barely keeping my wits about me.

Filed under the categories: Burning Man, Nevada, Nikon D3X, Travel