Your Worst Tripod Story?

I have a few… the one below is not one of the better ones, btw.. but what are yours?

Daily Photo – The Stars Above Grand Central Station

I took this photo a few moments before getting kicked out for using a tripod. They said I could go sign up for a permit, but I told them I could not be bothered. I wasn’t mean about it, just sort of matter-of-fact. I asked if women with strollers needed to get a permit or men with canes, and they said of course not.

I would like to make a tripod that attached to a baby stroller. In fact, instead of the baby, I could put all my camera gear down there. So it could be a rolling camera-bag-stroller with tripod attachment. It would look crazy, but it would be kind of awesome too.

The Stars Above Grand Central Station

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2012-08-16 20:38:41
• CameraNIKON D800
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time2
• Aperture5.6
• ISO50
• Focal Length14.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

See you in Australia

Thanks to a last-minute change-of-plans, it turns out that I am headed on a secret adventure in Australia! I’d like to start it off with a PhotoWalk in Sydney! Here’s the details:

Everyone is invited for this fun event – all skill levels… it doesn’t even matter if you just have your mobile phone and like to snap away with that. Personally, I’ll have the whole shootin’ match with my tripod and stuff, but this will be immediately obvious upon arrival.

Cost: Free
Date and Time: Tuesday, SEPT 25th at 5 PM Sydney Time
Location: Sydney, First Fleet Park http://goo.gl/maps/uh8p2
Who to Bring: A family-friendly event! Bring the brood!
Photo Sharing: After the photowalk, attach your photos to this event in Google+!

I know there are many beginner and serious photographers in the area, and I look forward to meeting you! I’m VERY sorry for the last-minute notice, but my schedule has been erratic lately.

We will walk along the waterfront, take photos, and I’ll go through several demonstrations. I’ll describe what I’m doing, and all questions are welcome. I hope it is both a great photo-experience and learning-experience! 🙂

Daily Photo – Fast Action in New York City

Speaking of PhotoWalks, I took this photo right after the photowalk in New York City a few weeks ago! I emerged from Grand Central Station and was about to walk across the street when I saw this scene. That guy was still as a statue, checking his phone while the world went on around him.

Fast Action in New York City

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2012-08-16 20:43:51
• CameraNIKON D800
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time0.5
• Aperture5.6
• ISO100
• Focal Length18.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias-1

Wanna Carve my Face in a Pumpkin?

I never thought I would write a title like that until I saw this! You can find out more Pumpkin Carving Tips on the page where I found it… (and thanks to the unnamed fan who found this strange thing for me!).

Daily Photo – Inception: New York

I took these photos in New York City before going to LA to prepare for Burning Man. I found this spot below in midtown during a walk from Bryant Park over to the Facebook HQ in NYC. If you check my Facebook page, you’ll see some photos that Luke shot of me while I was taking this shot. It’s the one when I was awkwardly up under my camera shooting almost straight up in the air! You know that position…

Inception: New York

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2012-08-16 19:55:04
• CameraNIKON D800
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time1/60
• Aperture5.6
• ISO100
• Focal Length17.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias-1

SmugMug Winners – Free SmugMug Pro account!

For everyone that didn’t win, you can at least use “STUCKINCUSTOMS” to save money over at SmugMug. If you want more info, see my full SmugMug Review here on the site.

I picked five people from the recent photowalk in San Francisco (see the tag on G+), and here they are: Keith Cuddeback, Omar AlQabandi, Joe Ercoli, Joette A. Wangsgard, and Dave Bell. Just leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to have our support team hook you up with your prize!

More categories?

Are you a newcomer to the site?  Yes, besides all the photography tutorials and stuff, there are endless categories of countries and locations down the righthand side there.  The site may be going through a redesign soon, but I’ll be sure to always keep that monster-list somewhere!

Daily Photo – New York City Travel

So this is my newest photo of Times Square.  I return to this spot time and time again.  The situation, light, cars, people, and billboards are always different, so it’s never a dull subject.  It’s also always such a challenge to shoot that it keeps all my senses fully honed.  In fact, I’m already thinking about going back to New York City for another photograph of Times Square!

New Flatbooks on the way!

One of the many fine eBooks over at FlatBooks.com. This one is from the great photographer, Joseph Linaschke.

We have all kinds of new eBooks coming soon to Flatbooks.com! There are many authors working away now including Lisa Bettany, Ben Willmore, Jack Hollingsworth, and Jaime Ibarra – I can’t wait till they are available to read!

Daily Photo – New York, Yellow Cab

Here is one of my favorite areas of New York. It’s right by the famous Flatiron building — but I obviously did not shoot in that direction here.

There’s often a nice traffic flow, and it makes for a fun experiment to time out the traffic. Since I shoot from -2 to +2., I try to predict when the middle exposure will in the right spot to get the right amount of blur on that photo. My rules for this are a little different based on the time of day and a few other factors.

Reworking old photos

Today’s photo is not a reworked older one, btw… but I was wondering if you sometimes do that. Will you go back and re-do an old photo?

Daily Photo – The Action of New York City

I just finished working on this photo. It was a difficult one, but it was a lot of fun. Shots in Manhattan are often filled with all kinds of complex activity, and Times Square amps that all up to the next order of magnitude.

The weather was perfect this day, and I know that isn’t always the case. Since everything was more or less idyllic, I decided to make the most of it and see how many compositions I could squeeze into the afternoon. The only time I spent waiting around was watching for a few Yellow Cabs to streak by.

HDR DVD Spotted in the Wild

Yes, the rumors are true. Several dozen copies of the HDR DVD are out in the wild. I confirm that these are out there… we have given out a few as ‘testers” to make sure they work with many different DVD players and computers. Since this is our first mass-production product, I want to ensure that everything is of the best quality. We’ll be letting newsletter subscribers (Free to sign up) get the first stab at ordering, since I’m a little worried about meeting demand.

Daily Photo – The Hover Car in the Diamond Age

Around the time of the book signing in New York earlier this year, I headed out into the streets for some shooting.  The Diamond District is not too far from Rockefeller Center, and it is a perfect “New Yorky” area at night… especially in the rain.  Between stoplights, I would pop out into the street and grab some frames as quickly as possible.  With five exposures, the last was pretty long at 30 seconds, so it was still a little “exciting” to grab the tripod at the last second and then scurry off the street.

That one car the made it through my tripod-roadblock is interesting, isn’t it?  It appears to be a hover-car of sorts.  I can no longer recall what sort of car it was, but I keep staring at that wonderful apparition.  It’s quite mesmerizing, floating there on the rainy street.

Tutorial HDR em Português

Do you speak Portuguese? My friend Gisele did a full translation of our HDR Tutorial, which is now mirrored here as the “Tutorial HDR em Português“. I know we have a bunch of fans down in Brazil and Portugal, so I am happy to make this available!

Of course, as always, we have the regular HDR Tutorial, if you want the King James version.

Daily Photo – The Park Through the Sky

Isn’t this park awesome? It is an elevated park that weaves along top of New York City. Hardly anyone knows about it!

Of course, people in New York know about it, and they assume that everyone else should know too. It’s relatively new — I think it only opened a few years ago. It’s called “High Line Park”, and it used to have freight trains that ran up and down it back in the 1930’s. That train service is dead, and they converted the entire thing into a long, meandering park.

Steve Simon (see SteveSimonPhoto.com) took me to this place after we had a fabulous French breakfast. I got in a bit of trouble for using my tripod, so I collapsed my tripod and acted like I was walking away until the security guard did. And then I re-built my decepticon transformer and took this HDR.

Workshop Sold Out!

The HDR Workshop sold out in less than 24 hours! We increased the price of this one to about $1,450, but we did not want to let too many people in. Apologies there, but the DVD will be considerably cheaper and be available more widely (see below).

One cool story is that we have a repeat student! One of the crazy (and skilled!) HDR students named Elvind (@EivindDovik) that came from Norway to my Austin Workshop will also be attending the one in London. I need to get him a trophy or something! Anyway, we’ll all have a great time, and I really look forward to it.

In case of cancellations, you can get on the alternate list by emailing “sales AT stuckincustoms.com” — the team will get you on the list!

HDR DVD – First sets to newsletter subs

These will be available very soon, but in short supply. It’s our first time doing this, and the process of printing and shipping 6 hours worth of instructional material on 4 DVDs is not easy. Anyway, the newsletter signup below is free, and we’ll send out the DVD alert at a surprise time very soon!

Daily Photo – Exploring The Met

Many of you know that I like to go spelunking around the world’s museums and root through their impressionist paintings. The Met in New York City is one of my favorites — probably for their collection of Renoirs.

I didn’t get to carry around a tripod with me. So I had to do my best to find other ways to secure myself and my camera around the museum. This room had a few banisters, columns, and the like where I could wedge myself. I looked like an outright fool to get into this particular spot, but this spot needed to be photographed!

Portfolio is Growing

I’m still happy with my move to SmugMug several months back. If you decide to try them out, just use “STUCKINCUSTOMS” to save 20%. If you want to know more, see my SmugMug Review here on the site. I have a new bit in there about how it compares to Flickr with pros and cons. I still use Flickr too, and my photos from SmugMug get copied over there, since I intermix with many communities.

Now, daily, I upload a new photo to the Portfolio and it is appended to the end. I need to get in there and re-arrange things a little bit. But, for now, the portfolio goes into a slideshow mode that starts with some of my favorites and then cycles through all of them. You can start the slideshow, if you wish, by clicking the photo below!

Daily Photo – The Megapolis

I was spending the day with various characters including June Arunga, Paul Roussin, and Cali Lewis while hunting around New York City for some interesting shots. I never get tired of shooting there. It’s a bit like the ocean in a way… it changes and cycles with the light and the motion. I find myself circling back to the same bits again and again to see how things have changed.

I don’t know why I happened to be posting this one so close to the Petaluma puddle shot from a few days ago… I suppose it is just somewhat of a coincidence! The hardest bit about these shots is getting my head so close to the ground. It’s impossibly awkward, and I’m sure I look like quite the loon, splayed out across the pavement of Times Square!