Barn Of Your Dreams now Avail for Collection!

We have another Limited Edition Numbered Print that has just come available. It’s called “The Barn of your Dreams”, and if you are a regular around here you probably remember this wonderful place in Wyoming. I hope you like it as much as I do!

Thanks for the comments on the prints I’ve received via email, btw. I’m glad you find these affordable and unique. I wanted to ensure that each one remains collectable and has a particular number – this seems to resonate well! Thanks again!

Stanford Photowalk

We had a great one in Stanford! There were 40-50 people there, and the weather was downright lousy! When I arrived, everyone was taking cover under the tree, so that was kind of amusing to see… a bunch of people with tripods in the middle of a green expanse, all packed under a tree with tripods sticking out in every direction!

I believe we spent about two hours together or so. We walked around, talked, and geeked out with HDR! It was great fun, and I met some really nice people. At the end of the evening, we ended up in a Stanford eatery and I gave away a bunch of Smugmug prizes!

If you were there, come share your photos in the Stuck in Stanford group on Flickr!

Daily Photo – Towering Notre Dame

Notre Dame in Paris is such a fun subject for photography! There are no shortage of angles, times of day, and compostions for this place. It’s probably like having a really cute kid or an awesome dog – there are no bad shots!

It reminds me a little of the church I went in tonight at Stanford. Someone I was with told me it was one of the first places ever shot with HDR. Is that true? That would be quite the datapoint!

Open Photowalk and Speech at Stanford, between San Jose and San Francisco

Come join us!  It starts at 4 PM on Feb 4.  We meet at The Oval on the Stanford campus. We may or may not have a speech after the photowalk – my man there is having trouble setting up a venue – we will see!

Daily Photo – The Church in Limelight

This is Le Sacre Couer in Paris. It’s a beautiful old Catholic church that sits in the Montmartre section of Paris. I tend to walk around these places 5-10 times as the light is falling… looking at various angles and the like. I see some of the same tourists on every trip around the horn, and they always wonder what the heck I am doing. Of course, this doesn’t bother me, since they’re just annoying tourists, and they barely register as human beings.

Renting a D3S from BorrowLenses

I have a Nikon D3S Review coming soon, but, in the meantime, I am renting the lens from Borrowlenses.com while waiting to buy one! I’m going to use it as a second camera to my D3X, since it is often a good idea to have a second camera around. I haven’t written the full review yet, but I started it a bit, so you can see why I made this decision.

The team from Borrowlenses told me they have a short promotion going on — 10% off rental with the code 2010. It’s like Netflix for camera stuff! I have a review up on the Lens Rental page here.

My Music Playlist

The other night while I was editing photos in front of the class for “bonus time”, I turned on some of my music that I have collected from around the world. People always ask me for that playlist! Well, I have a lot… I think I am going to put them together here soon so you can see too. I’ll get that up and going within the next few days!

Daily Post – La Cremaillere

Ahh, the streets of France. If I could stroll them every night and find a new place to eat, I think I would be forever happy.

Anyone want to go with me? Looks like there are a bunch of seats there. We can just hang out and talk and munch on all kinds of things. But, I warn you, I simply can’t travel with picky eaters. I need adventurous eaters that aren’t easily scared of the unfamiliar. Not that anything in France is too strange… compared my Asian dalliances with live goldfish, durian, fried insects, live octopi, and live flounder. Okay, maybe I don’t need you to be as extreme as me, but I get drained when people around me only want burgers. Maybe this is just me!

New How-to Video coming within a week

I have a nice long video that I shot while at Yellowstone.  It discusses an interesting shoot of an awesome geothermal location and the trouble I went through to get it.

It will be available in the Videos section, along with all the others!

Daily Photo – Where the Impressionists Haunted the Streets

Montmartre, in the north of Paris, is a very artsy place and I would love to open a little photography studio there, even if it is a bit touristy now. I don’t think they had neon paint-palettes hanging in the streets when it was frequented by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and the whole cast of bohemian characters.

I’m halfway through a book now called “The Judgment of Paris”, about all these guys had to go through to get their paintings shown in the Salon. Old-school judges would only approve paintings that showed historical scenes and the moral teachings of antiquity. Consequently, dozens of today’s priceless paintings were stamped on the back with a big red “R” for “Refused”.

After the Impressionists’ paintings were refused by the selection committee, the artists would gather at cafes here, drinking wine that tasted of “mountwash and soot”, and lament about the state of the art, so to speak.

HDR Spotting invites still going out

I understand invites are still going out on HDRspotting.com. This was started with the simple idea that we can all increase the amount of attention for other HDR Photographers and drive traffic to their respective sites. The site always has new content on it, and more improvements come every week. For some of the best, see the Editor’s Picks!

Jason St. Peter from www.fiftypercentchanceofrain.com sent in this nice testimonial:

“I think HDRspotting has been a tremendous success and I am lucky to be part of it. It’s so cool to see so many great hdr artist in one spot. Being affiliated with hdr spotting and the stuck in customs brand has also helped drive much more visibility to my own blog. HDR Spotting quickly became my top referring site behind google and my top 10 images have over 35,000 views on the HDRspotting site. This is awesome in such a short time.”

Fan Page on Facebook

We made a few updates to the Fan Page on Facebook.  A new landing page and more FBML stuff on the way.  If any of you are FBML experts, drop me a note – I’d like to add some cool stuff to it!

Daily Photo – Impressions of Paris

I had a nice conversation with a friend this evening about the Impressionists of Paris and all they had to go through to get their work seen. The old-guard painters than headed the selection committee for the Salon of the late 19th century had a distaste for the Impressionists, and their work was continually rejected. I feel lucky that we all live at a time where our own impressions of the world can freely be shared. I hope sites such as HDRspotting can help everyone get their work better exposed to the world.

The inside of the grand cathedral of Notre Dame is a great place for HDR. Normally, I don’t like getting other people in the shot, but sometimes, it’s unavoidable. So, since I use a tripod, I don’t mind a bit of motion here and there… seems to give the place a sense of movement and life. Being in a big Catholic church also reminds me of the four years of Latin I had to take at my Jesuit high school back in the day. If you guys ever want to hear a dead language, just let me know!

In other news, I am collecting a few ideas for Twitter or Facebook contests that you have seen in the past. The publisher (Peachpit) and I are poking around for some of the best and most successful ideas for book giveaways when it is released. Frankly, I don’t want any of those brash contests that are “My 10,000th Follower gets a Free Book!” or “Retweet this 20 times to win!” — none of that nonsense. I want something that is fun, engaging, and works! Any and all ideas are welcome! You can send them here or via Twitter.

I was on the hill in the Montmartre part of Paris just after the sun had set. I pointed the camera over the sprawl of the city just as the lights were coming on for the evening. I made it my personal mission to walk down into the city that evening, meander around, and visit at least three pastry shops and eat a silly number of desserts. I tricked myself into thinking that I might be burning a lot of calories by doing so much walking. It’s amazing how easily I was able to justify French desserts.

This is an awesome church in Paris. These places are great to photograph. I believe this one was taken inside Le Sacre Coeur up near the altar. At the PhotoWalk, I had a few questions about how to get a tripod into a church, of all things! I wrote up a 10-step guide for this sort of activity a while ago that you can view at your leisure!

I’m spending the weekend in Atlanta. It’s about 10 degrees cooler than Austin here, which means it’s still inhumanly hot! I did get a chance to do a little shooting this evening. I’ll see if I can grab the sunset tomorrow night! I don’t yet have a good Atlanta shot… I’ll hope for some good clouds!

These Parisian facades along the Seine are about as classically European as it gets. When these buildings are lit up at night, they are really beautiful in their orange hues.

I took this after leaving Notre Dame and walking across a bridge heading north. I took so many photos of scenic spots… I could hardly figure out what to process first! I actually lament not being here at sunset, but the deep dusky blue still worked out pretty good.

Thank you again for all the wonderful comments you take the time to leave on here. I do read every one of them – my apologies for not being able to leave more timely and longer responses. I started a thread over in the HDR group on Flickr and I go check it once every so often… A guy got onto me there for responding slowly! Jeezo… Anyway, thanks y’all for your patience. In the meantime, I’ll try my best to keep servin’ up new photos for you every day!

This is the Sacred Heart Church that sits high on a hill in a very artsy area of Paris. Actually, all of Paris seems artsy to me. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a “full time artist” living in Paris. Wouldn’t that be just about the coolest thing in the world? Or maybe you would become spoiled in just a short while and take it all for granted. It’s very hard to empathize or sympathize with any mystical miserables that might be in that situation.

I usually take these with a single RAW, but I kind of like the motion in these people… on occasion it seems okay to me, like here.

Last, I don’t know how real this report is, but I saw the Nikon D4X (a 30 megapixel monster) was leaked out on Nikon Rumors. I am waiting for Nikon to send me an email and hook me up! It may be the only thing that makes me get rid of the sweet lady D3X!

Is there anything more wonderful than dropping underground in Paris to jump on the subway to appear magically in another part of the great city? Or even better… going up and down throughout…all around Christmas when the wet cool streets are lit with a soft blue glow…

I had a good friend suggest that I should make a photo collection of the most beautiful and interesting subway entrances around Paris. A great idea, as I have come to expect! I have one here to get things started…from George V, right by the Arc de Triumph on the Champs-Elysee… and I’ll make a point to go back to the city someday for a rendezvous with all the adventures that await there…

I love Paris! And who doesn’t? I walk the streets like a kid, as interested in the old cobblestones as the old architecture. I picture red wine crashing to the ground and spilling through the cracks, as in the opening of the Dickens novel. And then I look up, and everything is right out of a movie. I tend to ignore the tourists and idiots because they kind of take away from the… je ne sais quoi!

Here is a shot of the Hôtel de Ville, just about a 15 minute walk at midnight from Notre Dame, where I had just shot a stirring sunset shot. I wish I could freeze sunset and run around and hit every landmark at the same time… but since it’s impossible… I suppose I just have to go back another time. Anyone want to join me?

I was walking around close to midnight, taking the long way back to my hotel after leaving Notre Dame. This area was full of life, so I moved around to find a few interesting shots.

This is one place they do not like you to use a tripod — inside Notre Dame. I stuffed it down beside my leg inside my overcoat and acted like an invalid, limping in to pray to the pantheon of saints. Once inside, I dropped the rouse and extended the tripod like a transformer and shot away. I got off enough right before they told me to stop in rather polite French.

Yesterday’s photo brought back such good memories I thought I would serve up one of these too, in case you missed it the first time around!

It was just past 10 PM on the wet streets of Paris as I was getting lost on purpose around the streets near the Church of the Sacred Heart. I bobbed and weaved through various little alleys, streets, and tiny bakeries (where I would just have to stop for a moment), before finding my way to this little faire. There was a small carousel spinning away with tiny little French children screaming wonderful things…