Daily Photo – The Boiling Heavens

The weather was wet and heavy. It had that feeling that it will rain any minute, and every minute it did not rain felt like a lucky break.

This church sat up high on a hill in NW Iceland and could not be seen from the street. I happened to turn up a little driveway and found it at the top. You can’t see it from this angle (it was impossible to compose), but those homes on the left have grass roofs. There’s another cool shot of that I will sprinkle in during a later post!

I made a point of randomly driving up and down different roads while there.  Sometimes it’s tough, because I got in the habit of driving straight down these highways and ignoring everything.  I occasionally have a rough destination, and the side roads seem like a strange distraction.  Anyway, it takes real discipline to be distracted!

What I Like

I have this new bit there at the top with some menu options. You can see one of them is “What I Like“. I get questions from time to time about what inspires me, what kind of music I listen to when taking and processing photos, and this sort of thing. I don’t have much on that page now, but I’ll add more stuff over time (when I get some).

Daily Photo – Over the Top of Iceland

When I am by myself for weeks on end, I think I probably make bad decisions. I lose all sense of perspective and what is “normal”. I can’t decide if this is a good or bad thing… I guess some of both.

Anyway, I was driving along the coast in NE Iceland along the fjords. It was about 11 PM and the sun was setting. I was about to lose it behind the mountains, and then I saw a dirt road that went right up one of the mountains. So, I decided to take it for a bit to see if I could get a good photo of the sun.

So, I went up a few miles, and then a few more, and then even more. I could not stop and was chasing the sun across the highlands. I was getting higher and higher into the ice layer.  And then I found this little snowy river and stopped over to take this photo a few minutes after midnight.  What did I find next?  You’ll find out in the next few Iceland shots perhaps!

The New eBook Cometh Sooneth!

When I was working on this new eBook, I was faced with quite a problem. I know all the common mistakes, but I did not feel like going out to grab random images off Flickr to critique them. As I point out the mistakes, it might be thought of as too mean-spirited as I rip apart other people’s hard work.

So, instead, I decided to grab 10 of my very first HDR images where I made all the same mistakes! It was a lot of fun, actually, to back trough all my old photos and point out everything I did wrong, and what I do now to correct these problems. Even though it is quite embarrassing to fill an eBook with so many awful photos, I am doing it for the good of the world!

I hope to get it out in the next few days… been working on it at night for the finishing touches!

Daily Photo – The Silent Horse in the Fog

Every night around 2 AM in Iceland was like a dream.

I’m always enjoyed staying up late… As Sarah McLachlan says, “Night is my companion.”

Sometimes, after midnight is when things really start to flow, so my two-week sleep reversal of staying up all night to drive around Iceland was a trippy experience. The weather was always strange. Sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy — but always with a tinge of the surreal.

On this night, I was driving along the south of Island about 100 km from the recent volcano eruption. I could see bits of ash here and there when the light was good, but then a nightfog rolled in and covered the ground. Streaming past countless little farms, the horses floated about while the mists swirled underneath them.

Leave a comment to Win My New eBook in celebration of the New Website Design!

Update: the random winners are commenter #40 Nora, #61 Gordon Brown, and #407 Lauren Blackwell! Congrats!

I have a new eBook that will pop sometime soon.  It’s called “Top 10 Mistakes in HDR Processing, and How to Fix Them“.  It’s 37 pages long and filled with all kinds of great info.  To win, just leave a comment here and I’ll pick three random people the day before release. Good luck!

All of this is in honor of the new site design!  Here’s a little rundown of what you are seeing:

• New site design by the world-famous French designer Fabien Barral and coding by Bill Erickson
  • Visit his site at FabienBarral.com and see his famous movie posters, packaging designs, and other innovative works.
  • Bill Erickson is quite the WordPress genius – find out more about him at BillErickson.net
• The site is exactly as wide as before, optimized for people with big monitors and high resolution.
  • It is important to me that the daily photo is shown at 900 pixels across
  • Although this cuts out some people, according to Google Analytics, over 80% of people view this site at least over 1280×800 resolution – Wow!
• We have a new rotating ad section there on the right, where I will be rotating in fresh stuff from time to time
• A full new “Footer” area that contains some of the most common business/licensing questions we get
• A new smart top nav bar that contains links to the most important bits
• Site optimized to load 40-50% faster
  • Images more efficiently loaded
  • “Double-page-loading” problem fixed (some of you may remember this annoying one!)
  • Upgraded Apache to Lighttpd, which is a faster solution that is used by Wikipedia and many other sites
• And, last but not least, The Biggest Header Ever On Any Website.  Hey, it’s a scrolling website anyway, right?  hehe….

New Video – Behind the Scenes in Iceland

Here is a bit of footage I took a few days ago.  I hope you enjoy it… and let me know if you’d like to see even more behind-the-scenes stuff.

Daily Photo – The Lonely Fishing Hut

Most of the details behind this photo can be ascertained from the photo below.  This place really was in the middle of nowhere…  It was my goal to make it look as lonely as it felt.  As hinted at in the video, I have a full how-to video inside The Clubhouse.

Two Worlds in HDR – National HDR Day!

Rick Sammon launched something big and fun over at his website. It’s called “Two Worlds in HDR“. Pop on over to that link to take a look!

There is a fun contest too where you can win a free print of the winning images. Good luck to you!

Daily Photo – The Horse of Sagas

I was in the middle of a beautiful drive in Northern Iceland just past midnight. The sun was about to dip below the horizon, and I was in the last hour of a five-hour sunset. Unbelievable!

I passed a perfect grassy farm filled with perfect Icelandic horses. They are all super hairy and very friendly. The horses have no fear of humans or elves. So I walked right into a group of them and started taking photos. I waited a bit until this fine horse got into position with the setting sun just behind him.

This was taken with a Nikon D3S (Nikon D3S Review) with a 50mm prime lens (Nikon 50mm Review), shot at F/2.8. The ISO was 800 and the shutter speed was 1/1000th of a second. The focus was at 1.1 meters from the lens. Usually I don’t put this information in the post, as it is readily available on SmugMug. But, I figured a lot of people would want to know the specifics on this shot immediately. And yes, this is an HDR — a single exposure HDR from a RAW file.

The Horse of Sagas

Photo Information

---

• Date Taken2010-06-13 00:00:00
• CameraNIKON D3S
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time1/1000
• Aperture2.8
• ISO800
• Focal Length50.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

New eBook from David DuChemin

David just released a new book about shooting in Venice that you might want to check out! Even if you are not going to Venice, he talks about how he took each and every shot… good data that is easily transferable to any situation. Besides that, he’s got a good selection of eBooks on there… maybe something will meet your fancy?

Daily Photo – The Impossible Mountains

I spent a wonderful day and night on a farm in the far north of Iceland with fellow photographers Helga Kvam and Völundur Jónsson. We went out to do some shooting together, and then they made me a fantastic meal… I took a bunch of photos of that event that I will post at a later time.

Völundur and I were discussing one particular mountain that was extremely difficult to photograph. I can’t pronounce the name since I can’t speak dolphin, but it’s about two hours outside of Akureyri. The mountain is very spiky and narrow, and it’s embedded in a very rough patch of peaks.

So I did my best to capture it in context. There are great super-hairy horses everywhere, and four of them were playing on one side of the river. I set up… and waited….waited….waited…. for them to get in the right spot and then finally took a photo.

This shot was taken around midnight. Incredible light for that time, eh?

Burning Man PhotoWalk

I’m really looking forward to going to Burning Man later this year. This will be my first time, so I’m excited to see what it is like… I’ll be having a PhotoWalk while there, so I hope you can come along if you are there! I’ll get more details later.

We’ll just have to be extra careful and ask permission before taking photos of people… I think it’s just sort of a common-sense thing, but we don’t want to have any angry hippies wiggin’ out on us.

Getting Closer to the Volcano

I’m getting closer and closer to the big volcano here in Iceland.  I’m starting to see the ash that is piled up and some of the changes…

Daily Photo – The Alien Pool

If you have ever seen this area of Southern Iceland, then you can attest to these amazing colors! These are totally accurate…. and I would find it hard to believe had I not seen it first hand.

It was my first time to this area in the summer. Do you see those strange rocks? Well, some of what you are seeing is rocks and the rest is a very unusual moss. It’s a tan-green color. It’s extremely fuzzy/spongy and makes the whole place just seem unworldly. That, combined with the extra-blue water, made for a scene that was just shockingly awesome.

Strange Things I’ve Seen/Done so Far Here:

I like to do my best to give timely updates when I am off on a photo adventure…. so while I am here in Iceland for about two weeks, I wanted to pop in on occasion with some new stuff!

• Got my metal tripod stuck in an electric fence for 11 seconds.  That was 11 long seconds of shocks…  (was meant to keep the sheep in and photographers out)
• Received a wake-up call at 8 PM
• Took photos behind a waterfall at 3 AM
• Avoided a dive-bombing bird who was upset at me for some reason
• Found two caves
• Drove for 3 hours without seeing another car

Daily Photo – Trey in Hot Water

In some spots, this water is like a lukewarm bath.  In other places, it’s like falling in fresh magma.  I wish I could get some place that’s right in between…. you know… about the temperature of a molten lava cake.

The water is a strange, but natural, light-blue color.   Really, milky-white is a more apt desciption.  The edges of the water are black lava rock, and the water laps up on it, giving it a fine white stain all around the outside.

The whole time I was in here, I kept thinking this must be good for my skin…. removing toxins or something… that’s what they say, but who really knows.  Conceivably, it could be inserting more toxins into my body.

There is a fine silica there that you can spread all over to make a little mud mask. I didn’t really do a full mud mask since I’m not a woman.

OnOne Software Now Ready for CS5 OnOne Software has a new release out to make their cool plugin work with CS5. It’s really sharp, and I’ve been using it to process a bunch of photos. In fact, I just processed exactly 26 photos using OnOne. I’ll be releasing them in a special piece next week that I think you will enjoy! You can see one of those mysterious 26 over on the right… if you can figure out where that is, I’ll be super impressed! (And it will ruin my whole story!) If you want to pick up a copy, use the OnOne Coupon Code of STUCKINCUSTOMS to save the most money. You can buy and download immediately from the onOne Store I have a lot more information in the full OnOne Plugin review. I look forward to adding these 26 new images to that review soon!

Sleeping days and staying up all night in Iceland

I’m going to be trying something a little different this time. I’m here for about two weeks on a fun photo adventure. June is when the Summer Solstice is, and all the days around the have non-stop daylight. So, I’m going to try sleeping during the day from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. or so… And then stay up all “night” taking photos. There should be a 7 hour sunset followed by 7 hour sunrise! I’m so excited!

I don’t know what kind of Internet access while out in the fjords, so I have some really cool and exciting stuff queued up for y’all.

Here is a collection of my favorite Iceland photos from previous trips… You’ll see why I came back!

Get More Internet Stimulation!

I made a video to show you how to use Tweetdeck to stay connected to members of the Stuck In Customs community!

You all have always been very supportive, and I have gotten to know many of you either directly or indirectly via your comments.  I think you all will enjoy getting to know one another as well!  Typically, by the way, only 1% of readers comment — but a much greater percentage are very active on Twitter.  Remember Twitter gets much much better when you follow people who make good tweets!  If you are new to Twitter, you don’t have to stress out about what to say… just enjoy following interesting people!

To get your setup, do the following

• Watch the video below
• Here is the text to copy for the community:  http://twitter.com/TreyRatcliff/stuckincustoms-community
  • Funny people on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/TreyRatcliff/funny-twitter-heads
  • Art for your right-brain:  http://twitter.com/TreyRatcliff/art-for-your-right-brain
• If you want to get on the community list, *Add yourself and make recommendations here! (yes it is totally cool to recommend yourself!)

Other suggestions for Tweetdeck:

• Whatever interests you, make a “Search” column for it.  For example, my mom loves “General Hospital”, so I made a new Tweetdeck column for her with it.  Now, whenever anyone on twitter mentions something about General Hospital, she is the first to know!
• Turn off the annoying sounds and the little popup notifier under the settings.  For me, it gets to be too much to constantly see updates!

Linking to SmugMug

You guys may notice that all my photos link to SmugMug. If you want to find out more, see my article on “How to Make an Online Photo Album” and you can also find a SmugMug Coupon there on the link

Daily Photo – Once You’re Dead, it’s Too Late

I don’t know why I enjoy visiting cemeteries so much. They are great motivators for me, really… to get out there and start doin’ stuff.

I try not to let things I really want to do go by the wayside, but some things can’t be controlled, I assume. I certainly go through life with a no-fear attitude, and I guess I shouldn’t expect everyone around me to be exactly the same…

Anyway, maybe cemeteries only make me think this way about stuff, especially desolate, remote cemeteries like this one in the cold windy plains of southern Iceland.