HDR Workshop

Update:  SOLD OUT Registration opened this morning on the HDR Workshop page! Thanks, and I look forward to that upcoming weekend!

(I know some people had issues with website / foreign currency problems & paypal. Just email support at stuckincustoms.com if there are worries – they will take good care of you – thanks!)

Daily Photo – The Valley To Forever

The first part of one of my hikes in the Andes included a pretty serious jaunt up a mountain. This was jarring in many ways — mostly because I simply wasn’t expecting it. But, once I got to the top, and emerged to the other side, I was afforded this view.

My lackluster food rations and absolute lack of Internet was not really an issue with this sort of view. It was nice to be able to spend hours and hours hiking without having to worry about checking my email. Maybe this is partly why I like adventuring in remote places so much… I have really good excuses for being slow on emailing people back! When I am on the Internet, and people see me on Twitter all the time… they know I am there… they know they know… and ignored emails and tweets have no excuse!

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

Newsletter Growing Like Crazy!

Our newsletter (which is FREE) subscribers are off-the-chart lately. It’s very cool.

The company that we use for the newsletter software is called AWeber, and they have asked to feature our newsletter as one of their best.

We send out a newsletter about once a month or so… I make sure that newsletter subscribers get early looks at things, sneak previews, and the best of the month, all wrapped into a pretty little package.

Daily Photo – My Nymph in the River

Nestled deep inside this landscape is Irina. She is getting some fresh water for our camp. Irina took care of me night and day, making me all sorts of food, snacks, and drinks along the way. Over the entire trek, we went about 40km through the Andes, so I’m quite sure she helped keep me alive!

This beautiful location was near one of the many glacial rivers that flows out of the mountains. The air was cool and crisp, but not frigidly cold. You can see Irina has a little hoodie up to keep her nymph-ears warm. The air was just about perfect for the strenuous hike, because I ended up generating quite a bit of heat while carrying so much photography equipment.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

Bonus Stuff For You

I have several sections of the website with miscellaneous stuff that has built up over the years. I give out recommendations all the time on books, music, apps, etc etc. Some of this stuff needs an update, but some stuff is pretty fresh!

• Best TED Talks – I just added a great one by Stephen Wolfram…  I studied Computer Science and Math in college… so I like that guy
• Trey’s Book List – A list of some really cool books that I recommend!
• Twitter Lists – Looking for interesting people to follow?  See these!
• Photography Gadgets – Some cool gadgets I use, including the wonderful Green Cube that everyone loves!

Daily Photo – A Rocky Morning

One morning when I crawled out of my tent in Argentina, a dense cloud was just rolling through. I got out to explore a bit, and the cloud quickly blew away to reveal an amazing landscape.

I had planned just to take a few shots and then go back to the camp and make some breakfast.  But then, I saw something interesting just around the other side of the rocks.  And then, I got over there and saw something else that might be interesting.  And it was.  And then I saw something even further away…

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Topaz Adjust, Travel

Google Talk – Now with Subtitles (Did the Google Engine do it Automatically?)

This  talk seems to be pretty popular – we recently broke 10,000 views, second to Al Gore and Joe MacNally – not bad – thanks again for all your support!  I am glad you find this stuff informative.

Also, I know some of the people in the audience here are hearing-impaired, and so now we have some good news for you! Some nice person there at Google went through my entire talk and added subtitles! I can’t imagine how long that took… or…

Maybe they used one of those automated Google speech recognition engines? It’s a good question — what do you think? I’ve only watched a few bits and pieces and saw some minor mistakes, but nothing major yet. I know I use Google Voice and it does a pretty good job of interpreting English into text. Maybe one of those clever people over at Google can shed some light on this question!

You can see the full Authors@Google YouTube Video here.

Daily Photo – The Floods of Lago Argentina

Towards the end of my trip in Argentina, we started exploring around the edges of some of the other towns.  One of them had started growing towards the lake before it started to flood.  There was a whole house community over here that had to be abandoned because of the lake.  It seemed like a great and unusual place for photography.

What you can’t see in this photo is how HARD it was to get to this spot!  I knew it would be a good angle, and the path looked just a little muddy.  But, it was one of those muddy steps where you immediately sink in knee-deep.  You know the kind I mean.  It’s the kind of step when you immediately feel soft dutch-chocolate-mud seep up and over and into your hiking boots.  And then there was, of course, the horrible mud-sucking sound as I tried to yank one leg out while another was quickly sinking.  It was a bad scene, but, priority #1 was keeping the camera safe and tidy!

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

Digital Audio Redux

Here are a few recent interview on Audio that you might have missed. Enjoy!

• Digital Photo Experience with Rick Sammon and Juan Pons
• Interview on the “Typical Shutterbug” about the upcoming book, HDR, etc. Hosted by Victor Cajiao.

Book Stuff

I know there are many HDR Books out there, so we are happy to make Abduzeedo’s Great Reads for 2010!

Daily Photo – The Deadfall

The hike through this Argentinian national park was beautiful and photographically exhausting!  I usually always carry my camera right on my tripod, and then hold my tripod in my hand as I hike around.  I stop SO often to take photos; I simply cannot imagine all the trouble to re-pack my camera in my bag after every shot.  Then, I feel like, it would be too easy to come up with an excuse NOT to take the photo.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia

The book is “Officially” out

“A World in HDR” is officially released! I’d like to thank all of YOU for your inspiration, your support, and being with us all this time. I truly appreciate it.

I understand warehouses are filling up and orders should be shipping any time! For sure, I stayed up all night signing things for the pre-orders that went through this site. My signatures are all real… and not fake stamps like so many others. I walked into a Barnes & Noble tonight here in New York to see if they had my book yet… They say any minute! But, on the way out, I saw Alton Brown’s cookbook that was an “Autographed Copy”. It was so obviously a stamp that was infused into the jacket! Anyway, I am sorry if they got a little messy around 6 AM, but at least you know they are real! I wanted to make sure we got these out to everyone ASAP… it’s important to you, I know, so it’s important to me.

Peachpit is putting the press release out today, so everything is official. You can visit the HDR Book page to order it from all the popular spots. It’s a mass-market distribution, so your favorite bookseller should have it. And, if you already have gotten in and enjoy it, why not pop over to Amazon and give the book a review? We now live in a world that is powered by people like you and your opinions — and I would appreciate that very much!

Daily Photo:  A Morning at the Secret Lake

This was shot in the Andes of Southern Argentina just near the border of Chile.

I spent several hours of hiking in the dark just so I could get to this spot at sunrise. All the darkness in the lower half is the shadow of the mountain behind me as the morning sun rose above it. I was so thirsty from the hike, and had not brought any water with me. Looking on Google Earth beforehand, I knew there was a lake up here and I could fill up… so I got down on my hands and knees and drank like a horse… oh boy that was some good fresh water… You can see my little footprints in the snow there on the left.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

Twitter contest starting soon!

I am on Twitter at @TreyRatcliff, but you guys should follow @PeachPit if you want to enter some fun upcoming contests to get a chance to win a book! I ran a post recently called “5 Great Twitter Contests“. We are going to get started with “The Michelle”, so get ready! I’d like you to follow @PeachPit since they will be the ones running the actual contest — I didn’t want to fill up my own Twitter with book-centric tweets and annoy everyone!

Daily Photo – A Final Sunset

There is that languishing pain of the final day of an amazing trip. You know the feeling. It’s the old, “Man, this sucks… I have to leave tomorrow…” feeling. I was trying not to think that while I shot this final sunset in Argentina. Truthfully, I was thankful for the clouds and the perfect light.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Travel

Kiva and Stuck In Customs

Today, I am announcing that a percentage of all book profits for “A World in HDR” will go to Kiva. I have written a little bit about Kiva on the Charity page here on the site. Also, I made this little video to tell you what the heck Kiva is. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s probably not what you expect!

To get started, come join Team Stuck In Customs on Kiva and let me know your experiences! You can either put it here or on the Charity page.

I’d like to thank Sloane, who runs the Causemopolotan.com blog, who I met through Michelle Greer, who runs MichellesBlog.net (that links to a recent article she wrote after getting some notions from my reading list! – cool!)

Live Interview Today, Nov 9, on TWIP (This Week in Photography)

Watch LIVE HERE!

At 11 AM PST (1 PM CST), tune in live to the video at Leo Laporte’s TWIT cottage here on live.twit.tv. I won’t be talking about HDR today… I think that is being saved for a future interview when the book comes out. However, I will be talking about that video method I used to make the “Moments Between” video.

Come tune in Live and send Tweets along the way to @frederickvan! If you miss it, you’ll have to wait for it to be released on Wednesday! Don’t let that happen!

Today’s Photo

Our daily photo today comes from deep in the Andes. Getting to this position was not as long a hike as the others around Patagonia, but it was no cakewalk! It was one of those strange river-rock strewn areas where the rocks seemed to be the perfect size for spraining your ankles. I had the tripod extended to act like a walking stick, although it’s not the most handy walking stick with a giant Nikon on one end of it!

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

We started the hike before the sun came up. It was really cold, so I was dressed in layers. People always give you very silly advice. Actually, whenever anyone tells me to “dress in layers”, I always find it very condescending! Why is that? I don’t know why that bothers me. I mean, OF COURSE dress in layers. Oh, you mean, if I get too hot, I can just take off a layer? Oh, brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? Well… This is a concept everyone is already familiar with, so whenever anyone tells you to “dress in layers”, try not to let it annoy you as much as it does me.

Anyway, after removing many layers, since I was burning hot after the first five minutes from carrying 50 lbs of camera equipment over the Andes, we stopped at this mountain lake to relax and have a quick lunch. It was a good chance to drop off the bag, put together my camera and tripod, then break it all down again, repack, and get back on the hike.

Also, we have a fun new features opening today on the site. It’s a great and simple way for you to share photos on Facebook, Twitter, Email, or IM. You can probably see it when you mouseover a photo… I think it will be a good way for regular viewers to easily share the photos with their friends and family! Below is a short video showing how to use it (even though it’s pretty dang simple!). Again, the more you share, the better it is for the site… so thanks again, very much!

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

This is the Perito Moreno Glacier that empties into Lago Argentina. It was simply awesome to be there, as you can plainly see.

I was there with a bunch of Russians who had brought an insane amount of cognac. Between shots, they would all drink cognac, yell, and try to bring down the next ice wall. We were the only ones there, and we stayed until the last moments of dark to eek out every last bit of light from the sky.

Also, I wanted to point you to an article over at Abduzeedo yesterday about the new book. It was written by good man Paulo Canabarro (his Twitter account here). You can also follow @Abduzeedo if you are looking for another good set of Tweets. I notice that people that complain about Twitter always have the same sort of complaints: “I don’t want to know when everyone is standing in line at Starbucks!” Well, then, I say, you are following the wrong people! Once you get 50-100+ people to follow, it becomes a nice source for information, fun, and inspiration. It might take a while to build your personalized list, but then you will be hooked. (I am @TreyRatcliff, in case ya didn’t know).

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

Two textured shots in a row! Sorry, I usually don’t do this (put two very similar things back to back on subsequent days) but I’ve been spending my weekend evenings here recording these videos. I just finished this one and was happy with the way it turned out.

There was this interesting tree sitting alone after a morning snow. The snow had melted, but the skies still had these white-out conditions. Those skies normally make for very dull visuals, so I thought this would be a good candidate for textures. I think, by now, you guys know I can’t stand a boring sky in my photos… and since you can’t always have a four-star sunset, maybe it drove me to use the world around me to find textures to re-purpose inside these photos. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll figure out that bit in a while.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Stuck In Customs Textures, Travel

I’m in the middle of working on a full upgrade for the Stuck In Customs Textures Tutorial. I think it’s already very good (only had ONE return in over a year!), but I can do even better. I’ve learned a lot in the past 18 months about this stuff and the technique continues to evolve. As I am working through some new shots for the tutorial, I thought I would go ahead and post this one. It was taken late one afternoon near a glacial lake on the southern edge of Argentina.

We have put together a fair upgrade plan if you have purchased the current Textures Tutorial and you want to a new set of 50 Textures taken from secret locations along with the new video. I’m excited to get it out there… not sure how much longer it will take. I want to give it a professional touch. In the meantime, I wanted to share this one with you!

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Stuck In Customs Textures, Travel

This is yet another glacier-filled lake in the mountains between Chile & Argentina. I got up pretty high on a short hike to get this shot. I had seen this bright tuft of red leaves and wanted to work it into the final product. We were on the edge of autumn and a few leaves were starting to change colors. Most of the leaves were not in any interesting compositional angles or were impossible to get near! So this one took a bit of a hike to find and set up…

Also, thanks to everyone on Twitter and Facebook that became agitated when the cop threatened to arrest me because I looked like a professional photographer with my tripod in front of the Coke museum. Anyway, Coke saw the message on Twitter and via several emails that were sent in – so thank you Gail and all the others that helped! Props to Coke Social Media (see down in comment 55) for the response.

And last, I’ll be on FOX here in Austin this (Tuesday) morning for the morning news… A little interview at sunrise. It’s midnight and I should be asleep right now… okay here I go.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Patagonia, Travel

After we set up camp in a little wooded area, we headed off to see if we could get to one of the glaciers by sunset.  This is near Cerro Torre, a region that is disputed between Argentina and Chile.  I didn’t see much of a dispute while I was there — no armies or anything.  I did see some wayward Guanacas, but I was not sure which side they were on.

I walked along the river until I got to a stopping point, where I got stuck.  I couldn’t cross because it was too sketchy, even for me.  So I set up here to prepare for the sunset.  This was shot about two hours prior to the sunset while I was exploring the area.  I’ll be sure to edit the other photos soon (ish) and get them up!

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

On one of the mornings when we woke up in Patagonia, I came out of the tent to find everything covered in a soft blanket of snow. It was the middle of the autumn there, so the rich deep colors on the trees stood out in sharp contrast to white snow.

I grabbed this shot as quickly as I could before the snow started to cover everything up too much, which can tend make for a somewhat washed-out shot. I believe this photo was at f/2.8 with the 24-70 lens. That aperture helped the most interesting tree in the foreground to stay sharp while everything else stayed foggy and snowy (which it kinda was anyway).

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

I know some of you remember Natalia from El Chalten on the southern tip of Argentina, so I thought I would add another photo of her.

When we were walking back from the shoot, it got a little chilly, so she covered up a bit. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this or not… but she’s one of those gals that always seems to be posin’. Kinda like Angelina, I suppose, where you get the sense that she is always aware of the presence of a camera. So, since I had on the 50mm 1.4, I took a few quick ones like this while walking down the trail.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel