I wish I could walk to dinner every night and find little places like this along the way. Since I carry my tripod and camera just about everywhere, I’d always be ready in case something like this pops up!

This was shot in Halle, Germany, just a short train ride from Leipzig. I love how these old churches are often lit with orange lights… I think it always makes them look nice against the blue dusky skies.

Setting up the tripod for these evening HDRs always allows you to set the ISO as low as possible, and in aperture priority mode, the shutter will stay open for a long time, letting those clouds drift by and drag light across the lens. It gives a nice feel to the shot and makes the church look even more timeless and solid.

If there is one thing that is almost as cool as being deep in the Himalayas, then it’s being at Disneyworld after dark near the Expedition Everest ride. This is probably one of my favorite rollercoasters, and I endeavored to stay here late one night to try to grab the moon in the right spot. The whole area is riddled with excellent little Buddhist offering temples, where you can submit fruits of offering in exchange for the blessing of not tossing your lunch right before the Yeti takes a swipe at your runaway train.

I also got a very nice Twitter message yesterday from a dad who was excited that his kids were getting him my Textures Tutorial for father’s day. I thought that was kind of cool and I was flattered! Of course, that means he’s going to have to use the techniques to make some memorable photos of his family… This is something that I always hear too… that I don’t take enough photos of the family, but I do I do! But I don’t think that the grandparents can ever be happy unless I have a webcam on them 24 hours a day like a non-stop grandchild Truman show.

This is an old library found in a remote temple complex in the wilds of Cambodia.

It’s hard for me to imagine what a library was like back then.  A library in the 12th century must have been very interesting.  Almost 1,000 years ago, I imagine it was probably filled with all sorts of fascinating scrolls and documents.  Without the Internet, it must have been the most interesting thing to do on a boring day.  I wonder what it would be like to rip back in time and show them the iPhone and then show them some ancient-scroll app from the App Store.  I’m pretty sure the AT&T connectivity would be about as good as it is in 2009.

See how cool American cars used to be? And then they started getting designed by committees and focus groups and marketing experts… Did anyone see that Simpsons episode with Poochie the dog? I think about that episode a lot whenever I see a boring product flounder its way onto the scene.

Anyway, none of that has anything to do with anything… other than just as a talking point when looking back at old American cars and how much personality they used to have. This was shot at a classic car show here in Austin, which is always a great place to take the tripod for some HDR goodness…

Angkor Wat was built to honor the god Vishnu and his shrines fill many of the hallways and crossroads within the temple complex.  This was shot in the inner part of the temple, where the walls came together to form a quincunx.  The symmetry of this place was wonderful, as you can tell, so it was a real joy to move around and get a bunch of compositions that made good mathematical sense.  This is something I think about a lot when I shoot…  taking the entropy of the world and reducing it something that is mathematically idealized inside of the frame dimensions.

In other news, we have two Stuck in Customs Newsletter (sign up here – it’s free) styles for you to choose from!  We have Choice 1 and Choice 2.  Which do you like better?  I’m curious to know your thoughts…

Although Indonesia was quite a beautiful place, it was also incredibly poor. Every country has its Hans Rosling (see his amazing TED video here) predictable bell curve of wealth distribution, and Indonesia has so many people in it (almost as many people as the US), that a lot of people end up over on the left-hand side of the curve.

While walking around one of the cities there, I went off-track and ended up in a small settlement underneath a bridge. This family had set up here, found old couches and bits of refuse to build their home. This little girl was outside playing, arranging scraps of trash on the ground in interesting patterns.

I stopped and talked to the family for a short time. They were nice and didn’t mind me taking photos. The mom seemed a little suspicious but then calmed down when she saw I was good with kids. The dad did not speak a lot of English, and I indicated to him that his house looked pretty sturdy compared to some of the others. He pointed to one across the river, which you can see in the upper part of the photo, an, in broken words, said that part of it had recently washed away. The dad was pretty happy with what he had built. He motioned to the little fence and then motioned to his little girl.

There is a perfect stream here on the edge of Montana that backs onto a ranch where I have stayed a few times. At night, you can hear the stream rushing by while you sleep. Sometimes, in the morning, you can see a bit of steam coming off it as the air adjusts. In the middle of the day, the fish are biting and there isn’t another fisherman for miles.

It looks like it might be easy to cross, but, believe me — it isn’t. There’s a few deep pockets in there that you won’t find until you’re one step too late. I’ll never forget the time my chest waders started filling up with cold river water. Once a little bit starts, it’s a slippery slope!

I also ended up doing a bit of tubing down this river too… which I’m sure was completely confusing to the fish underneath.

I tried to give this one a very Twilight Zone feel to it. The whole ride at Disney World is filled with Rod Serlingesque treatments, so I thought it would be a fitting adjustment.

This ride is pretty freaky, and I totally recommend it!

I was lucky enough to get a tour of the Memphis Grizzlies home stadium when there was hardly anyone around. The Fed-Ex Forum is an amazing facility. I think it looks like a great place to go watch games. The surrounding downtown area is also very cool… seems like it would be a great way to spend a night out. I’ve never been in Memphis on game night, but I’ll be sure to make that happen some time!

Also I got to go back in the locker room and meet some of the players. The guys were so nice and affable… I couldn’t get over it. I don’t know what I expected, but they were just all really young nice dudes. And then I saw this little underwater rehab/training facility. It was really wide and had this conveyor belt that ran under water. I asked why it was so wide and was told it was originally used for horse rehab! Crazy…hehe…

Memphis finally got a good pick in the draft… #2! That’s great for those guys… go Grizzlies! 🙂

This was a totally new way of dealing with death to me.

Malacca is a small seaside town in southern Malaysia. It has many Chinese residents, a majority of whom are still quite poor. When the family members die, there is usually very little money to give them a grave in a graveyard, so there are a multitude of shrines and temples in which families erect these miniature tombstones, stacked deep in rows. There are thousands and thousands of them. A photo is attached to each one, and most waste away with time. A few solitary ones remain behind.

In other news, there was a recent interview by the Homebody Blogger that I have been meaning to post. It has the over-the-top title of “Master of HDR Photography, Trey Ratcliff”. Well I don’t know about all that (!), but here is a link to the interview for you.