Testing Facebook Notes

Over on my Facebook Fan Page, we’re trying something called “Notes,” which is kind of like a blog post… Here’s one I just published!

Bendemeer

If you want to get this view of Arrowtown, you have to go into the Bendemeer area and drive to the very very end of the road then walk up a little hill. I’ve been to this beautiful area before, but never took the time to walk up the little hill

Daily Photo – Speaking of the Shoulder Season

I took this photo in the middle of Autumn during one of our workshops here. This is Arrowtown at the foot of those mountains. Doesn’t it look quaint and perfect? That’s how it actually is too!

Speaking of the Shoulder Season

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2015-04-22 04:03:19
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/125
• Aperture8
• ISO125
• Focal Length70.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias-2

Future Workshops

Be sure to pop over to our workshops page to find out what is coming next. There are actually many on there not even announced, so watch out for the newsletter to ensure you find out first about future offerings in New Zealand or other places, far and wide!

Daily Photo – During the Autumn workshop in Arrowtown, New Zealand

Here’s one of many stops we made during our amazing week together on the New Zealand Photo Adventure. It’s always an amazing week, and this year the colors seemed better than ever. But I say that every year. I think I forget, you know, how beautiful this place is here in Arrowtown, which is only a 20-minute drive from Queenstown. It seems SO FAR for us locals, but it’s really just a rounding error, isn’t it?

During the Autumn workshop in Arrowtown, New Zealand

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2015-04-22 14:13:22
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time0.4
• Aperture4
• ISO100
• Focal Length28.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

A New Video!

A New Photo-Video for you – All New Zealand awesomeness…

I have a Landscape Photography Tutorial based here in New Zealand available over at https://stuckincustoms.com/landscape-and-travel-photography-tutorial-new-zealand/

Animation/Slideshow – more info at https://stuckincustoms.com/links/animoto — or see my review at https://stuckincustoms.com/animoto-review/

Amaze-maze music by the New Zealand band, Arma Del Amor – see more at https://www.facebook.com/ArmaDelAmorNZ

The Artist

This artist that made that statue across the water is Max Patte. Be sure to check out some of his other work too! I believe he’s also the guy that designed the new suit for Batman, among other things!

Daily Photo – Across the Water Hazard

The Hills golfcourse near my home has some absolutely beautiful water hazards! How can something be so pretty and scary at the same time? Honestly, I don’t play a lot of golf because I kinda suck. So I usually prefer to take my camera around the course rather than my sticks!

Across the Water Hazard

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2014-08-12 15:57:45
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/400
• Aperture4
• ISO160
• Focal Length25.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias-0.3

Getting that “Sunburst”

Don’t forget that you can get this kind of a sunburst if you set your camera to f/16 or higher. I find f/16 is usually good enough. You can go higher, but then you risk seeing more of the dust and junk on your sensor, which I always find annoying to fix in post.

Daily Photo – The Bend at The Hills

The Hills golf course near Arrowtown has a bunch of these quaint irrigation streams that flow around the golf course. I’ve never seen any other golf course with this kind of situation. The way they all bend and weave around the course are quite picturesque! It’s also super-easy to take photos there too. I pretty much just walked along this thing for an hour getting a ton of different interesting photos.

The Bend at The Hills

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2013-02-07 22:26:03
• CameraNIKON D800
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time1/160
• Aperture16
• ISO100
• Focal Length24.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias-2

DJI Quadcopter Review

Today’s photo is from one of them, so be sure to check out the DJI Phantom Review soon!

Big Arcanum Update!

Be sure to go update your Application at The Arcanum. We now have added a few new things to help future Masters find you. I know there is a HUGE number of people waiting, so the more on the ball you are, the more like you are to be chosen from the orphanage!

Here’s a screenshot of one of the new Application pages… you can see how incomplete my own application is! I’m going to update it now 🙂

Release Notes (Thanks Tania Court!):

Grand Library – Filters

There’s two new filters in the Grand Library that are really exciting (mainly because it means some of us won’t lose that video we were watching at 3am on Saturday morning during a impromptu cohort hangout).

My History lets you see what videos you’ve watched in descending date order

My Liked Videos lets you see videos you’ve liked easily.

Grand Library – Tags

– When viewing a video, Masters and Apprentices can now edit the descriptive tags on ALL videos. We encourage you to help us add more tags / keywords to any video you watch. It will help others to find videos in the future!
– Also when viewing a video, you can now tag yourself if you appear in it (this works for both Masters and Apprentices), the new option is located just below the video on the right.
– Masters can now tag one or more Apprentices from their cohort in videos that they submit.

To make sure you’re comfortable with having videos of yourself in the Grand Library you can now choose to hide videos you’re tagged in. Go to your Profile and the new Settings tab. There you will find the a new option for the Grand Library. If you’re shy about having your critique shared then make sure you’re tagged in the videos and then choose the “No One” option under “Who can see videos I’m tagged in”.

Other Updates

We all love to spend so much time in the Grand Library that it’s easy to forget about the rest of the stuff that goes into The Arcanum process. Not so for Curtis and his team – they’re busy keeping the rest of The Arcanum processes up-to-date. Here are some of the updates to the other processes that make The Arcanum run…

– The new Settings tab also includes an option to control who can see your City/State/Country. We do not share your general location today. If we do, it will only be used to display where Apprentices are roughly located on a map, solely for members of The Arcanum
– Updates to the Application Process and Personal profile pages were made to encourage a fully complete profile. There are also new options to better define your Learning Goals as an Apprentice, or Teaching Goals as a Potential Master.

Keep in mind that all of theses updates have come as a direct response to feedback from you so please keep the comments coming and let us know other improvements you’d like to see!?

Daily Photo – Above the Wolves

Here’s a DJI Quadcopter shot over the amazing wolves here at The Hills near Arrowtown. It’s so cool how they were distributed in this patten… this vortex of wolves. I got to meet the sculptor when I was in Beijing most recently. It was a great honor to spend time with him and share some tea! 🙂

Above the Wolves

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2012-01-02 22:59:54
• CameraHero3-Black Edition
• Camera MakeGoPro
• Exposure Time1/390
• Aperture2.8
• ISO100
• Focal Length2.8 mm
• FlashNo flash function
• Exposure ProgramProgram AE
• Exposure Bias

Composition Tricks

Here’s a little trick with composing photos. As you know, it’s usually bad form to put major things (like the sun) in the middle of the photograph. But, if you turn the camera sideways (said in a Raising Arizona voice) into portrait mode, you can suddenly center anything and it looks good! You can imagine the photo below in landscape orientation — it would not be as compelling

Daily Photo – Arrowtown in the Autumn

Arrowtown is so lovely! There is a huge park right by the main street and the trees go crazy in the Autumn. I kind of think this photo is cheating, because you can kind of aim your camera in any direction and just take a photo!

Arrowtown in the Autumn

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2014-04-30 16:29:59
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/15
• Aperture16
• ISO100
• Focal Length39.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

Winners Chosen, but Good News, 20% off for everyone else!

Thanks again for participating in the Trey’s Lightroom Presets giveaway yesterday! We put together a special discount code of 20% off ANY of the Presets on that page that will be good for just a few days. Just use the code “SPECIAL20” at checkout and you’ll be in good shape!

List o’ Winners!

Be sure to sign up for our free Newsletter to be informed of future contests! 🙂 Anyway, here are the winners for yesterday’s giveaway on the blog (Luke will contact you shortly with download details: Sandeep Singh Thukral, Gary Waddell, Nadja K. Rutkowski, Krishna Gandikota, Michael Ng, Grace Reutzel, David Sheehan, Shae Baxter, Natasha Khalil, James McGowan, GlenGO, Jason Morton, Skyler Ratcliff, Beth Lindley Mears, Kyle Wilson, Steven Clyde, John Scherer, Barbara Penko, Tim Drummond, and Jay Dadlani

Upcoming PhotoWalks

More PhotoWalks are loosely being planned this year to include Burning Man, New York City, San Francisco, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, Berlin, and Cape Town! And maybe a few other surprise cities too…

Thanks again everyone!

I really had a great time in Denver at the amazing photowalk event there! It was great to meet everyone there. I hope you had a great time. Thanks again to Justin Balog for organizing the whole thing. Here’s a photo he took just as we got started!

The Barn at Lake Hayes between Arrowtown and Queenstown

You’ve heard me mention my friend’s amazing cottage you can rent here on Lake Hayes. It’s called The Barn at Lake Hayes and you can actually see it in this photo over on the far right!

Daily Photo – The Amazing Mirror Lake

This lake is perfectly smooth maybe only one out of ten days. One day we were flying over it with Choppy from Over The Top Helicopters, and it was mirror-glass-smooth! So amazing! I asked her to take the chopper down nice and low so we could get a clean shot. I set the camera to manual mode and amped up the shutter speed to make sure I got a clean shot. Wow, what a view! I’m glad it came out as awesome in the final photo as it looked when I was there!

The Amazing Mirror Lake

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2014-05-03 14:26:44
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/500
• Aperture9
• ISO500
• Focal Length39.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias+0.3

Speaking of the Flight School

Here’s a full video about me learning to fly at the place depicted below! 🙂

Daily Photo – The Flight School Cafe

You have to come here after having Swanny all up your backside while teaching you paragliding for the day! Be sure to tell them Trey sent you! This is an amazing place for food… breakfast or lunch. You might just see me landing there… Have fun! 🙂

The Flight School Cafe

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2014-02-02 11:07:49
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/160
• Aperture10
• ISO100
• Focal Length14.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+0.7

New Trick with Cameras

I figured out a new strange way to take photos with my Sony A7r — actually this will work with any camera that has a flip out screen that points at least 90 degrees upwards.

As you may have tried before you know that looking straight up with a wide angle lens often produces really interesting results. The problem is actually the “looking straight up” bit! It always hurts my neck, especially when on a tripod. So now what I do is just aim the camera straight up and walk forward behind it, normally, but I keep the screen flipped up to 90 degrees so it is right in front of my eyes. It makes it super-easy to find the shots you might normally miss!

Daily Photo – Looking upwards by the river

These trees were the first to lose their leaves this season, but I wanted to see if I could still make an interesting photo from them. That trick above helped. The colors maybe came out a bit dull initially, but I do like the way everything turned out when I added some of my Lightroom Presets to them. These are from the latest edition of the package, and I’m secretly working on a few more… will let you know!

Looking upwards by the river

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2014-04-30 17:15:30
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/80
• Aperture8
• ISO125
• Focal Length15.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+0.7