Blog now on Amazon Kindle!

Do you have a Kindle? Now the blog can be wirelessly delivered to you, fresh daily, and right as rain. Get the Kindle Version Here. Enjoy! And thanks, I appreciate your support!

We’ve had this available for a bit, and I have been testing it and all systems are go!

Great workshop weekend! Here is Silver Efex Pro

We had a great one – thanks everyone for coming! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I got a real kick out of seeing people’s results from the night before. People went home and tried all of this stuff for real and got some stunning results. On Twitter, check the the has #HDRWorkshop for a few samples. Thanks again for all the enthusiasm when you come to the classes – that is really nice of y’all.

Towards the end of the workshop yesterday, I showed off Silver Efex Pro. I like how this turned out! You can see more in my Nik Review here on the site! Below is one of the shots that I whipped up towards the end of the workshop to show off how cool (literally) Silver Efex Pro is!

Daily Photo – Zen Peaceful Iceland at Dusk

The soft magnetic blue of dusk lasts a good hour or more in Iceland. It’s a nice time to relax into your right brain, move around freely, and take photos until you collapse in exhaustion.

In Reykjavik, there is a lake that freezes solid, or, at least, it appeared to be solid, every winter. I started walking slowly across really give it a test. Why not? During my scoot-fest, I found this wonderful little bridge.

I’m thinking of going to Iceland this year for the summer solstice (that day when it is 24 hours of sunlight)… sounds awesome! I can’t imagine a 5 hour sunset followed IMMEDIATELY by a 5 hour sunrise!!

Comments appear to be broken on this one post – strange! As always, you can click through to the Flickr comments if you want to say something – I read them all

I probably should not have been standing in the middle of this frozen pond.

But when you are raised in Texas and you rarely get to see anything frozen, you get fascinated by large frozen bodies of water. I just stared at it for a long time like a deer that’s never seen headlights in the forest. I felt the saying, "When in Rome", and somehow replaced it with "When in Reykjavik…"

I slowly shuffled my feet out to the middle, using my tripod as an Imperial Hoth Walker to secure my footing. Once I got to the right spot for the lens, I ripped off a few shots before heading over to the safely of the shore.

It was about 5 in the morning in Reykjavik and I was colder than any human is supposed to be, but I had my coffee and tripod and was on a mission to catch the sunrise. While en route, I passed the icy city hall while the dawn light was breaking to capture this.

The night I first arrived into Reykjavik, I only had a few minutes of light before the darkness. I soon discovered that the final deep blue before dark lasts about an hour in Iceland. I am quite sure they take it for granted, because I saw it every night and everyone was going on about their business, not taking notice… Over by the docks, I found these four guys securing the blades on this helicopter for the evening.

It’s closing in…

This was shot in the docks of Reykjavik in Iceland… some ropes for mooring the icebreakers and fishing boats.

BTW, regular blog readers may or may not know you can click on any picture to go to my Flickr site where you can get the ultra-large versions…

It was bitter cold at the harbor in Reykjavik. Burly Icelandic fishermen looked at me suspiciously as I walked around with my camera and ipod through the ice and carp skeletons to find some interesting things…

Also we have a new advertiser this month over on the right, so feel free to check them out.

I made it to Iceland…This church is beautiful, eh?

A slippery trip into work!

Actually Icelandic people are quite attractive… I don’t know why this eerie sculpture in Iceland makes them look so creepy creepy…

I’ll be heading back to Iceland soon, and maybe stopping off at a few fjords to find some of these wild-haired horses prancing about. This time, I’ll bring a pair of gloves!

I’m getting psyched for my next trip up to Iceland for the Eve Fan Fest, so I am posting this picture I have finally gotten to from Reykjavik. I heard there are over 1,000 people coming from all over the world for the event. I’ll be happy to represent the old guard of Taggart Transdimensional.

This was shot during the sunrise just after the lake in Reykjavik was frozen over.

Here once again are some of those furry horsical creatures that run free around the fjords of Iceland. These guys are surprisingly docile, although I did not try to ride one.

I came across this gem early one morning before work while exploring Iceland.

One morning before meetings, I woke up early to go down to the frozen lake in Reykjavik to watch the sunrise and drink coffee.

Hallgrimskirkja is just about the coolest church in the world. I’ve never seen this style of architecture before, but it’s very satisfying from a phi-golden-ratio-geometric standpoint for some reason. I can’t put my finger on it and I don’t know why such a simple geometric style has never really been attempted in any real way by other cultures around the world.

Icelandic people are very interesting, tough, and independent. I’ve found that their thought and creative circles are almost completely separated from the traditional Western Europe (+US-spawnee) and the Far East. This leads them to do things a bit different than the rest of the world and it was refreshing to talk to the locals and see how they approach everything from a design perspective. It’s got a lot of that Scandinavian clean elegance, but still very much its own.

This is a long shot of Gulfoss, which is one of the coldest and most slippery areas I’ve ever been in my life. One misstep and you are at the bottom of a Rube-Goldberg series of frozen waterfalls. I think the huge tripod actually helped me keep my balance!

The ice near the town square gave off an interesting purple glow during dusk. I think it was the warm colors from inside the buildings mixing with that strange blue light from the long winter dusk.