Japanese People

Aren’t Japanese people pretty awesome? I mean, this is sort of a sweeping thing to say, I know… but, really… whenever I talk to people from various countries, most everyone finds the Japanese to be wonderful and quirky. There’s never one single thing that people mention… but there is something about it all that is quite nice.

You probably think I’m crazy now.

Daily Photo – The Hare in Harajuku

Every time I go to Tokyo, I try to spend some time in Harajuku. It’s one of the wildest and most unique places in an already unique city. It’s the sort of place where you take a people-shooting lens because of all the various types of people you see walking through the streets. And even more unique than the people are some of the shots and the decor, as you can see here…

Filed under the categories: Japan, Tokyo, Travel

Travel Days

Tips for Managing Airports:

1) Bring snacks from home – You can’t ever find just what you want at the airport… and, when pressed, you may end up getting crappy food that makes you feel kind of junky on the plane.

2) Laugh at the TSA – It is indeed “security theater” as you watch them pat down grandmas and children. I’ve seen so many stupid things they do just to give the “impression” of security, that I try not to get mad any more… and I just try to remember that TSA stands for Tub Stacking Authority. And, also, whenever possible, travel outside of US Airports, where they treat you like a human and not a guy in line at Taco Bell. Try the Japanese airports and you will have a happy experience.

3) Watch people’s eyes – I like to analyze people by looking at the way they are taking in the world around them. It’s very interesting… maybe you can see it too… when people just have a look in their eye like they’ve given up on life. You know what I mean… and then you see the eye of some other people and they look amazingly full-of-life and ready to engage in the world.

Daily Photo – Snowy the Snow Monkey

This little guy and I had a little friendship after a few days.

I spent time all over the hills and rivers here outside of Nagano taking photos of these snow monkeys. And you get to know them after a while… there are a few that you see over and over again. I started giving them names… the same way my daughter gives names to everything… and all the names were quite childish… Like I called this guy, “Snowy.” It wasn’t very creative, but he didn’t seem to mind.

He followed me around morning and night. And he posed… oh how he loved to pose. Some other monkeys I got too close too and they gave me the wide-mouth attack move…. but I never got too close to Snowy. I didn’t want to ruin the little grizzly-man thing we had a-goin’ on.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Nikon D3S, Tokyo, Travel

Daily Photo – The Lake at Nikko

This place was Cold with a capital C, as you can plainly see.

And worse, I had forgotten my special little gloves with the flip-up fingertips.

So I was goin’ finger-commando while trying to line up this shot. The wind was pretty stiff in my face. The wind always seems to be against you, eh? I think I just never notice it when it comes from any other angle.

By the way, there is only one place that is convenient to quickly warm up your fingers.

There is an older, historic part of Nikko that is about a 30 minute drive away. The drive is practically straight up a mountain, through a series of switchbacks. During the entire time up the mountain, I was surrounded by clouds. I thought it would be quite miserable at the top. But once I poked out, everything was free and clear. I was between cloud layers, exactly where this chilly lake sat at sunset.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Nikko, Travel, tutorial

Your Favorite Inclement Shooting Conditions?

Okay, let’s take perfect weather, sunrise, and sunset off the list. So, do you prefer a rainy morning, a snowy evening, a good lightning storm at night, or what?

Daily Photo – The Gentle Path to the Beyond

The little train that carried me into Hakone started winding through misty mountains. The trees were thick and a fog was rolling in. I had a feeling that it would stay wet, moody, and fairly perfect. It had that heaviness that made you feel like it would remain like that for a few days, and it did.

Before I get on train rides, I have a wonderful but dangerous habit of loading up with pastries. Train stations seem to have nice little selections of all sorts of foreign twists on the usual subjects. And, since I consider myself an explorer, I thought it would be good to get a TON of pastries and try them all. It’s very nice… sitting there… looking out the train window at a new land… rain falling… eating pastries… (and I’m only a little ashamed to say that, upon arrival, my pastry bag was empty.)

Filed under the categories: Hakone, Japan, Nikon D3X, Travel

Last Day To Register!

Remember that all-expenses paid trip to Austin to go shoot an abandoned power plant with me? Entering for the prize (and registering for webinar) ends in 24 hours.

To enter, just leave a comment here. We’re up to over 250, so be sure to get your name in the hat! Don’t forget it also comes with a free new copy of Photoshop CS5.

Daily Photo – The Midnight Wonder Garden

Whenever I am in a place like this, I try to linger as late as possible so I am the last one remaining. There are occasionally other people around, but I really prefer to be by myself. I enjoy listening to music, relaxing, and walking around to find the interesting angles.

These are the lower gardens of Kiyomizu-dera in one of the older parts of Kyoto. I’ve been to this area multiple times, and I try to go at different times of the day and different seasons. I’d love to be lucky once and catch it in the snow… I suppose that would mean I need to go in the winter or something.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Kyoto, Nikon D3X

Live Webinar Class Registrations Open!

Okay, it’s now official! All the information and registration info you need is on Trey Ratcliff’s Photography Webinar page. Great name eh? Hehe… I actually struggled with a name. Like, for example, I didn’t want to just call it an “HDR Webinar”, because what I teach is so much more than just HDR. Anyway, it’s a 3 week course — 9 hours and 9 different classes. It’s gonna be awesome.

Here we are with the biggest conference badges of all time. They are actually super-big because they have the whole schedule on there. Matt is the awesome one on the left.

I Met Matt Groening!

While at the EG Conference, I met all sorts of interesting people, and I hate to say one was any more interesting than the next, but this one is a little special. I don’t have many creative people in the world that I really get giddy about, but Matt Greoning (creator of The Simpsons and Futurama) is one of them.

After I finished my talk (which should be available online soon), I was able to spend a bit of time talking to him… we talked about creativity, how to work with a team, about robots, about robots taking over the world, about how I was hoping that his strangest contribution to society would be that we would fill our lives with ridiculous and funny robots rather than the ones who simply want to kill us, and this sort of thing. Matt was SUPER NICE and engaging. Really… that guy is awesome.

I also met another guy I really admired artistically, but that did not go very well.  He treated me very strangely, and I felt foolish.  I can’t put my finger on it… I was really kind of crestfallen.  It sucked away a lot of my mojo…  anyway, I’m still trying to come to terms with that.

Daily Photo – Hidden Temple in Bamboo at Night

This place was pretty far off the usual beaten path but I was glad to find it!

In Kyoto, there is a wonderful and unexpected temple that weaves through an old bamboo forest. It weaves up, down, and around hills with warm, calming bamboo swaying about. Here and there, little temples, urns, and benches are placed. Everything is delicately lit to add to the mood. And just beyond where the lights are, the bamboo forest is pitch black and full of wonderful mystery.

Daily Photo – Hidden Temple in Bamboo at Night

This place was pretty far off the usual beaten path but I was glad to find it!

In Kyoto, there is a wonderful and unexpected temple that weaves through an old bamboo forest. It weaves up, down, and around hills with warm, calming bamboo swaying about. Here and there, little temples, urns, and benches are placed. Everything is delicately lit to add to the mood. And just beyond where the lights are, the bamboo forest is pitch black and full of wonderful mystery.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Kyoto, Travel

Chernobyl Story

I spent a day in Chernobyl and wrote a two part story about it. This is from a while ago, but I thought maybe it was timely… The situation in Japan is different of course.

Print for Red Cross Charity

We started the bidding at $49 and it ended up at over $1500! Fantastic! There was a happy anonymous winner somewhere in the Mountain View area. The print is being assembled and crated right now… on the way. It arrives in a huge Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-crate! Thanks again for participating.

If you still want to be involved, even at a lesser level with one of our other charitable offerings, come join Team Stuck In Customs on Kiva

Daily Photo – Japanese Girl with Mask

The white mask is a popular meme in Japan. It’s pervasive and it affects all ages. I see school children wearing masks, old people in the subway, and everyone in between. I was waiting to see a new trend where the face masks have designs — quirky, cute Japanese designs. If no one has done it, then there’s a great idea for you.

I like them, I suppose. In a way, it makes everyone look a little bit mysterious, and that is sort of interesting.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Nikon D3X, Tokyo, Travel

Japan Charity Week – Last Day

The bidding ends today. Thank you all for participating; and thanks for being interested even if you did not jump in. If your budget is smaller, you can always donate to the Red Cross directly, or, if generally in the charitable mood, join Team Stuck In Customs on Kiva, where we’ve raised over $10,000.

That’s the print that is on auction there to the right. We only do limited edition prints here, so each one is unique. This particular one is numbered 9 out of a series of 50. It’ll look great in your home or business!

Daily Photo – The Lights of Japan

One evening I was walking around Roppongi, taking in all the sights. There doesn’t seem to be a bad direction to go. Everything was alive and full of life.

Getting into this particular position took a few Cirque de Soliel moves that no one was around to appreciate (or warn me against). There is a pedestrian set of stairs that blindly switchbacks its way up an outside drum-tower of sorts. I had a feeling that on top of this little tower would be a good vantage in this particular direction, which I had not seen, but I had mapped out in my brain. I did one of those moves like children do when they work their way up a doorframe — but I did it in a narrow stairwell. It got me to the top, which was extra-difficult with the tripod! I ended up with a clean view of everything. But then, only then, did I start to wonder how the heck I was going to get back down.

I waited for a nice-looking stair-walker to pass by underneath, and then I handed down my camera before performing an unceremonious jump/fall.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Nikon D3X, Tokyo, Travel

For Japan!

Bid on this print of The Bamboo Forest now. It is numbered 9 out of 50 in the Limited Edition series on high-white gloss aluminum. This print is 36″ across and, well, it’s impossible to describe how incredible this new printing technique is. These come out looking literally like giant high-def monitor displays.

Even better, shipping is free, and they arrive ready to hang on the wall.

We will have the auction run for a week, and I’ll take all the proceeds and donate them to Red Cross for Japan. Stay tuned for the latest price on the eBay page!

The Print – The Bamboo Forest

I took this photo on one of my many trips to Japan. Regular readers know how much I love that country and the people inside. I’ve spent time all over, taking trains far and wide, and there is something universal and timeless about bamboo across the land. On this particular day in Kyoto, there had been a morning rain. The sun came out, but the tops of the bamboo forest still held the water. It misted down through the forest as the sunlight shone through.

Signed / Numbered

Down in the lower right hand corner, everything is signed and numbered in the series

Filed under the categories: Japan, Kyoto, Travel

Is my new Japanese Video racist?

I love YouTube commenters. You see a little bit of everything on there. And it’s wide open for every idiot to spout their nonsense. I had not checked the comments on my latest video for a while, so you can imagine my laughing reaction to some of the flotsam that has collected. See the comments here.

How to make these videos

If you want to see more of these sorts of videos, how I do it, more from Japan, and this sort of thing, come visit the Stuck In Motion page here on the site for a full how-to.

Daily Photo – Kimono Under the Cherry Trees

It was my second time to Kyoto, but my fourth time to Japan. I started to become more accustomed to the times of day and the comings and goings of the ladies in kimonos. You can see them most any time of the day or not, but they flood out of every crevice around this time of night.

The pink cherry blossoms made everything seem like it was right out the days of the shogun. I shot this with my second camera – the D3S that I had across my chest. My main camera is always the D3X on a tripod, and I was getting a lot of night photography shots. But I had my D3S with a 50 prime ready to capture things like this. Another nice advantage is that it seems to make the trees feel a bit more soft. There is another soft aspect to the colors – these prime lenses capture the tones in a very soft way.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Kyoto, Travel

LA Times Article on HDR Photography

Thanks to Robert Lachman over at the LA Times who wrote this article on HDR Photography. As you can see, Robert is also a photographer that has the HDR bug! You can see that first image in there is his… not too shabby eh?

Daily Photo – The Creepy Green Stairs

Why are the stairs green in this? Anyone, Anyone? Bueller? Voodoo economics is the answer.

Instead of answering directly, I’ll let you clever readers figure out the answer and put it down in the comments… I have faith in you guys to figure it out!

This was taken in Kyoto, Japan on a rainy evening. This is one of the main temples that stay open late into the night. It’s one of my favorite times to come, because the crowds are gone and everything is extra-eerie. It makes it even more special while I’m listening to my special playlists on my iPod. It really gets me in the mood to make these sorts of shots.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Kyoto, Nikon D3X, Travel

Best Photos from Japan

When I’m not fighting off mechs in Japanese dating simulations, I’m usually busy taking photos of the environs. If you want to see some of the my best HDR photos in this area, just click the Japan category, and you’l be off and running. You’ll also find photos of Japanese schoolgirls that just might be mechs.

New Video – Seeing the Edge

I put together some of my favorite bits from this technique into this new short video. Enjoy! If you want to see more about this technique, see the “Stuck In Motion” page here on the site.

Filed under the categories: Japan, Tokyo, Travel