I still find this hard to believe, but I don’t take it for granted. I know most of you here are also on Google+ — so maybe you saw the TWO special messages and videos I put over there.
Special Message #2 – Ethan plays a song from Lord of the Rings
I asked my son to play a special song, and I put it on video… you can see the latest from the little hobbits!
Daily Photo – Christmas Tree in Paris
I visited this place about four times two weeks ago! If you saw the review yesterday, then you will note that I tried out a few lenses on this tree too. I think this one is my favorite of the shots…
This amazing Christmas display is in the Galaries Lafayette. Also, on the first floor, you should go have lunch at Angelina… they have amazing hot chocolate. The roof also has another cafe with amazing views of the city.
I’ve started putting the framework around a new Nikon Fisheye 16mm Lens Review. I’ve added many sample photos over there so you can take a look at the results of my experimentation and thoughts thus far…
Daily Photo – The Mysterious Places of Paris
Isn’t this room amazing? It’s not in the main part of the Paris Opera House, but it had the most ornate and Inception-esque room I’ve seen in a while. I took this photo while in the middle of experimenting with the Nikon fisheye lens. It seemed to fit the bill for these ornate grand locations that are still in a relatively confined space.
Well this one is kind of crazy. I checked my YouTube stats for the first time ever. I don’t add a lot of videos, but the ones I add are quite long. Anyway, this stat shows almost 10 million minutes of my videos have been watched – that is crazy! I don’t think I’m THAT entertaining on video… honestly… I’m not like, say, Flavor Flav or anything…
What Prints Hang in My Home?
I got this question the other day, so I thought I’d list them out here. I’m always changing them out… but here are some of my favorites, including the new one from Paris below, which I just had printed here in Queenstown at WePrint.
Our Prints page has more details. But you can order the Artist Proof series on metal. Each of those is in a limited quantity of 50, and each one is individually signed by me. There is another more affordable series, which you can access by ordering via the SmugMug portfolio.
Anyway, here are a few of the prints that I have chosen to hang in my home:
Daily Photo – The Amazing Eiffel Tower in Romantic Paris
I shot this just recently with Tom Anderson. We almost didn’t leave the hotel because it was so stormy, but we had been watching the clouds all day. We started out with Miss Aniela at the Paris Opera before exploring the rest of the city. Sunset comes early here around this time of the year (about 5 PM or so), and it always sneaks up on us.
Some of the best sunsets come right after storms… so it’s always worth a little adventure if you don’t mind getting a little wet…
Want to see what we ate for lunch? It’s hard work, you know, shooting all day at a French chateau and then sitting around post-processing with wonderful people. Sometimes you have to take a break for a super-elongated French meal! You can see Tom Anderson’s fingers back there dancing away on his Mac in this photo taken by Daniel Hurtubise.
If you want to see a video from the event, come sign up at for the Newsletter so you can find out first once it is edited together…
Daily Photo – Sunset at the UFO Landing Zone
This was shot back behind the chateau after dusk settled into its final colors for the evening. All the light was so strange outside, from the blinding white near the fountain to the golden hues reflected off the chateau to the nebula purple from the dithering sky…
Ben is a great teacher, and I highly recommend his eBook, The Fine Art of Painting with Light, over at Flatbooks.com! Here are the bullet points we have listed out over there:
Over 90 pages of lightpainting info
28 real world examples
Easy-to-understand how-to guide
Tips on flashlights & other tools
Guide to image processing
Photoshop compositing walk-through
Daily Photo – Inside the Conciergerie
The French know how to build a beautiful prison! On the downside, it held up to 1,200 prisoners at a time, which sounds more like a French subway.
They don’t like you using tripods in here. I asked if the punishment was to just leave me in the prison while I take the photos. And then, when I stopped using the tripod, they would let me out of prison. This seemed like a pretty good compromise to me, but they did not find it amusing.
I look forward to meeting you all at the PhotoWalk in Paris soon! See all the Event Details here. That event is also a great place to share your photos afterwards.
Photomatix Light
We still get new people coming to the website all the time! Many people ask how I get this kind of light in the photos. It’s all thanks to Photomatix — just check out the full free HDR Tutorial here on the site and have fun! It’s easy…and you’ll have a great time trying it out!
Daily Photo – Windows in Paris – The Saint Chapelle
I wish I could find a good wide-angle lens like this Nikon 14-24 for my Sony NEX-7. I think one is coming out in a month or so… and I’m thinking of trying out the Olympus 7-14mm (Adorama link). The NEX-7 has served me as a good camera while my D800 is getting repaired!
This will be a great a event in Paris — join Miss Aniela and me at a French chateau for two amazing days of learning and art! Registration opens soon.
Check the Midnight in Paris page now for all the details, and keep hitting Refresh at the registration time to grab one of the limited spots!
Here’s a little bit of info below.
About Miss Aniela
Miss Aniela is a fine-art and commercial photographer based in London. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Europe and the US.
“Photography is always my ‘living’ whether I am working on personal or commercial work, because it is creating that keeps me feeling alive. I pour my mind into everything I create, and always aim to push the envelope with consistently compelling imagery with the highest production value I can make possible. In my personal work I want to stir people to question and to think, intelligibly – about the problems, the beauty, and the conflict between them, in the world around us today.” – Miss Aniela
And, well, you guys know me… but here are a few of my Paris photos
I’ve been here twice, and I haven’t really had enough time to shoot. I think a few more trips are in order… one problem with Versailles is that it is so big! It takes quite a while to get from one bit of it to another bit.
Daily Photo – Drama at Versailles
This is one of the smaller “guest houses” at Versailles. It was filled with all kinds of art and the sort of ornate furnishings one would expect of French Royalty. Outside, there was a tremendous courtyard and the clouds were quite dramatic, so away I shot
Now the new comment system has been there for about a week. What do you think?
I really like it. I think it is cool how you can see other discussions and trail off to read what people are writing on other posts. It’s also been more convenient for me, personally, because i can put in embedded replies on occasion. Anyway, thanks again for all the comments – I read them all!
Daily Photo – A Night at the Museum
This is one of the final photos I was able to squeeze off before the security guards nabbed me. Arg! I wanted to get so many more… but you know, you know… it’s the same old story.
Anyway, if you ever visit Paris, you absolutely need to make it over here to the museum of natural history. It’s known to the locals, but not to visitors. All the other sites in Paris are great, of course… but if you have a penchant for science and a love of crazy interior design, this is the place for you!
I wonder how many of you are able to see the Chinese version of the website. It’s perfectly identical, except there is a “/zh/” after the StuckInCustoms.com — most browsers should automatically switch to that if your browser is set up, but I have never really asked you guys if you see that version.
Daily Photo – Angelina in Paris
This is some of the decadent hot chocolate from Angelina in Paris. Thanks for the people on the blog here that turned us onto this place! I’ve ended up there many times, and I always order too much… enough to get a little bit queasy, but the good-kind of chocolate-queasy.
If you go, be sure to stop there and get one… it’s also a full restaurant/cafe. I got the croque-madame, which is like the monsieur, except there is an egg on top.
Catherine Hall, Karen Hutton, RC Concepcion, Lotus Carroll, Alex Koloskov, and Eden Brackstone join me for this discussion about all the photowalks that happened during the Google+ Photographers Conference. We all share a ton of photos and stories from our walks.
Here are some of the people whose work was shared during the show:
Eric James Leffler, Michael Frye, Joseph Fanvu, Alan Morris, Alex Shamis, Almus Null, Beverly Anderson Sanchez, Darlene Hildebrandt, Dave Bell, Jamie Zartman, Joe Ercoli, Joette A. Wangsgard, Joseph Ip, Keith Cuddeback, Kimberly Hayworth, Logan Barrier, Omar AlQabandi, Paul Hurley, Peter Adams, Pradeep Das, Richard Camp, Shola Oderinde, Sly Vegas, Toby Harriman, Tom Hierl, Elizabeth Hahn, Curt Nordling, Sean Cawley, Richard Hay, Robin Leworthy Wilson, Angie Smith, Lisa Duncan, Jess Newcomb, Dennis Lodes, Kimberly Tweed, Noah Katz, Amy Heiden, Brian Rose, Sandeep Patil, Joel Horwath, Chris Chabot, Christianna Pierce, Juan Gonzalez, and Shawn Clover.
As always we close out the show with our Google+ Photographer Discoveries:
Amanda Recker, Alex Stepanov, Teri Lou Dantzler, Danny Tan, G Dan Mitchell, and Ian Thomas.
Thanks to Leo Laporte, Tony Wang, and Dave Veffer for helping out with the whole production!
This is a place that no tourist would find… I found it by accident and put it into Stuck On Earth! You’ll find this area inside the “Sample” trip of Paris.
Daily Photo - The Holy Halls
I returned here a second time with Scott Kublin to show him my little discovery. We didn’t have much time… and I don’t like to be rushed… but we did our best to move quickly around this area and squeeze in as many shots as we could! This is one of my favorites, a view down one of the long rows of unusual columns and vaulted ceilings…
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