Many New Books on Flatbooks.com

I know many of you go to www.FlatBooks.com to have a regular look at the latest offerings, but let me go ahead and give you these three in case you missed them!

• Travel Photography Exposed, by Mike Marlowe.
• Crowd Control, by Corwin Meunch
• Travel Not Required (Vol 1 and 2 Bundle) by Jason Muench

Daily Photo – Sheepstorm

On the drive down to Te Anau from Queenstown, you pass countless fields of sheep with dramatic mountain backdrops. I think sheep in fields are already pleasant enough to look at, but it gets even better when there is drama in the mountains and drama in the skies!

I’m not exactly the Sheep Whisperer yet, but I have noticed that you have to be quiet as a mouse when approaching a fence to take a photo. If just ONE of them gets scared and runs, they ALL get scared and run.

Filed under the categories: New Zealand, Queenstown, Te Anau, Travel

$250 Contest from Adorama

It continues! Check out some of the latest #TreysLightroomPresets entries here.

For the month of November we are running a photo contest to see all of the creative ways you use Trey’s Lightroom Presets. The winner will receive a $250 gift certificate from Adorama!

To enter, simply post your photo to Google+, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest and add the tag #TreysLightroomPresets along with the name of the preset you used to the photo’s description. You can post as many photos as you want during the month of November. On December 1, 2012 we’ll pick a random winner from the entries. Good luck and have fun!

Daily Photo – Crossing Monkey Creek

As you drive into Milford Sound, you may well decide that the drive itself is better than the destination. And that’s saying a lot, believe me!

I think one of the best unofficial hikes is right around Monkey Creek here. It’s certainly worth parking your car and spending a few hours walking around the area. Even without your camera, it’s still a feast for the eyes.

Filed under the categories: Milford Sound, New Zealand, Te Anau, Travel

The Car Trip

A few days ago, I posted a grouping of three photos from the car trip, so here are three more for you! Also, maybe you saw some of these in the new video that launched yesterday… so here they are a bit bigger and whatnot!

On the drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound, you cross a perfect little stream called Monkey Creek. This spot is worth at least a few hours of exploration!

I woke up early in the morning to visit the sound to see what was happening. Everything seemed in slow motion while the fog slowly wafted across the water…

Daily Photo – Sailing on Lake Wakatipu

The car trip started here in Queenstown on Lake Wakatipu. It was a perfect spring day, and there was a lone sailboat down on the lake. Everything is on such a big scale here, maybe you can get a sense of the overall size of the lake from the tiny sailboat on there… it looks like a toy!

Filed under the categories: Milford Sound, New Zealand, Queenstown, Sony NEX-7, Te Anau, Travel

Why Did I Move to New Zealand?

There’s a long story to it all… but I think you can see a lot of the reasons in the video below.

By the way, if you are looking to buy a house here and need a recommendation, contact me via support@stuckincustoms.com and the team will get you to me. I can make an excellent recommendation for you!

This video was made with Animoto!

I used a cool online thing called Animoto to make this video. I also wrote up a full Animoto Review here on the site.

You can also use the Animoto Coupon Code of “STUCKINCUSTOMS” to get 2 months free with a pro account… thanks for the team there for providing that for us!

New Video – Turning to Peace in New Zealand

It’s a hi-rez video… I recommend listening with earphones or good speakers too – enjoy

Filed under the categories: Akaroa, Auckland, Dunedin, Franz Josef, Glenorchy, Matamata, Milford Sound, Moeraki, Nelson, New Zealand, Nikon D3X, Nikon D800, Queenstown, Rotorua, Sony NEX-7, Te Anau, Travel, Wanaka

A fun weekend on the South Island

I jumped in the car with the family to take a little road trip down to Milford Sound. I took a bunch of photos, but wanted to go ahead and share three of them here with you. I know I usually just share one a day, but this is a little bonus I guess!

The road from Te Anau to Milford Sound is insanely beautiful. After a long drive through a meadow, you come to this small forest that leads deeper into the mountains.

Driving along the road through the mountains, you pass about 100 waterfalls. I’m not kidding! Many of them are buried in fresh green fauna, and you can’t see them unless you happen to be looking directly at them.

Daily Photo – Navigating Across the Rivers of New Zealand in the Morning Mists

I woke up in the morning before everyone else to go on an extended scouting mission. I arrived around this river just as the morning mists were lifting enough to give me a view into the distance.

Filed under the categories: Milford Sound, New Zealand, Te Anau, Travel

YouTube Channel Reminder

Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel so you get to see videos first! It’s recently updated… enjoy!

Daily Photo – Pink Mountains During Morning Sunrise

Te Anau is a great little town down in the southern fjord area of New Zealand. It’s sort of the stopping-off point for Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound. It’s also a great home base for photography, because there are countless things to see within just a short drive. I woke up early one morning to drive out towards Doubtful Sound and I saw this scene in my rear-view mirror.

Filed under the categories: New Zealand, Nikon D3X, Te Anau, Travel

Huge Geekbeat Contest

Cali Lewis and John P are giving away my downloadable HDR Video tutorial. Head over to the Geekbeat.TV page to find out how to enter.

A Week of HDR Tips!

I’ve got a special thing-thing for you this week! A special week of HDR tips! Rick Sammon and I are doing this thing together for fun, and I hope it helps give you some good ideas to take your art in new directions.  Go see HDR Tip #1, along with links over to Rick’s blog as well! This first tip is entitled, “Create Your Own Future”.

Daily Photo – A Gentle Stream Through New Zealand

All this news out of New Zealand is still upsetting. I’ve got a lot of contacts and friends down there… and I know it’s a rough time. Not much I can do… feel a little useless… so about the best I can do is post some serene and gentle photos of the nicer side of nature. I hope all my friends down there find it gets a little easier as the days move forward.

Filed under the categories: Milford Sound, New Zealand, Nikon D3X, Photography Tips, Te Anau, Travel

Speech at Adobe HQ

Come join me in San Jose! Thanks to the nice people at Adobe, the event is free, so I look forward to meeting you!

I’ve been invited to speak as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series, sponsored by the Advanced Technology Labs at Adobe. The talk is on Feb 24 at 1 PM PDT in the Park Auditorium at 345 Park Ave in San Jose. I’ll be talking about the future-present of photography, post-processing, HDR, and a little bit of everything.

Daily Photo – The Little-Known Submarine Secret Dropoff Location in Lost

What would a week be if I didn’t make arcane references to Lost, Firefly, Arrested Development, Burn Notice, the Simpsons, or Sledgehammer? Well… here goes the weekly quota…

Te Anau is one of the most stunning locations in the world. Located near the distant southern tip of the south island of New Zealand, it’s the home base for countless breathtaking excursions. About two hours from Te Anau is this place at Milford Sound. It’s called a “sound”, but it’s really a fjord. I heard an explanation of why it was not named correctly, but that escapes me now. I’m sure our smart members of the community here that are Kiwis can clear this up for us!

Filed under the categories: Milford Sound, New Zealand, Nikon D3X, Te Anau, Travel

Video from The Tech Guy

We have some fun video from the appearance on Leo Laporte‘s The Tech Guy yesterday. When I was out at Leo’s cottage a few weeks ago, he brought up the idea of doing a photography podcast on his network. I gave him the thumbs up and said I thought it sounded like a good idea! He said he wanted to put it together with me, Lisa Bettany, and Ray Maxwell. If you want to hear the latest in those discussions, fast-forward to the 12:30 mark.

Otherwise, we talk about HDR, the DVD, we critique on of his HDR shots, and this sort of thing. As far as links we mentioned, you can go to the HDR Camera Recommendations and the free HDR Tutorial.

And, after the interview, I forgot I was still on Skype!  So, he caught me carrying my computer back to the office… but I did capture some more behind-the-scenes stuff that you may enjoy…hehe.  You may enjoy seeing what happens during the commercial breaks of these shows… !

If you want to subscribe to more of Leo’s podcasts, just visit his main TWIT site. He has everything from the hit weekly show This Week in Tech that has John Dvorak as a regular to my fellow Austinite Brian Brushwood on NSFW. They have it all there!

Daily Photo – The Giant Sun Sinks into the Tasman Sea

Despite what I said in the podcast, sometimes you do want to go beyond +2 to -2 !  I can’t go through every caveat in those short soundbytes… but this exemplifies such a case.  In this photo of the sunset over the Tasman Sea, off the coast of New Zealand, I did take 7 exposures form +3 to -3.  Whenever you aim the camera right into the sun, you need to expose even more range than normal.

I am going back to New Zealand for about a month in October. It will be a blast! This time, I’ll be spending most of my time on the South Island, exploring around… I hope to bring back more wonderful finds from the wild for you!

Filed under the categories: New Zealand, Tasman Sea, Te Anau, Travel

Behind-the-Scenes in New Zealand

I recently edited together and posted this scene from the south island of NZ, when I was out in this beautiful meadow at sunset. I was using a 70-200mm lens, so I used this to add to my Nikon 70-200 Review.

If you’d also like to see the resulting photo, check out the Video on the Valley of Abundance page.

Daily Photo – Manhattan Living

When I was in New York City, I had the good fortune to spend time with Steve Simon. We had breakfast at this great little French place and then went around to do a bit of shooting. We stopped at his place and went up to the roof. Peering over the side, I saw this and thought it was kinda nice… so I grabbed a quick one.

Be sure to visit Steve’s site on the link above. He has amazing work and I am sure you will get a kick out of it!

Filed under the categories: Milford Sound, New York, New York City, New Zealand, Nikon D3X, Te Anau, Travel

Art Show in Austin

I arrived a little late to the show, and the girl that clicked us in said there were over 200 people there! Crazy! But it was really awesome to see this World’s Largest High Resolution Tiled Wall display. I enjoyed meeting a bunch of new people, seeing other artists, and checking out the whole scene.

A gentleman there named David Ingram (Dingatx on Flickr) grabbed this photo below to give you some idea of the scene.

Daily Photo – The Spray of the Tasman Sea

This was an incredibly difficult photo to achieve!

I did this one live, in front of my HDR Workshop in Tokyo. I like to tackle new photos in front of people so they can see how I struggle through the HDR process. It’s never easy… and I like to talk out loud and let people know my thinking process. I think this is a very interesting way to give a live tutorial, rather than go by some automated and predictable script. The way you think about all the unexpected problems, dodge and roll with the issues, and synthesize various tools to accomplish an end goal is an interesting process.

You’ll also see this on the upcoming HDR DVD. One night after an outing, I came back to process some brand new photos, and they all got to see me struggle through a few pieces to come up a satisfying work.

This was shot very recently when I was down on the extremely frigid coast of the Tasman Sea, on the southwest edge of New Zealand. With a wide-angle lens, you need to get in really close to this icy cold spray to get the splashes just right… I was completely soaked after this, and it felt (and smelled!) like I had just finished a multi-week crab hunt in the arctic!

Flashback Photo – I’ve Reached the End of the World

You can see the edge of this one from the giant wall display above… This one was also taken not too far from Antarctica…but on the opposite side of the globe down near the southern tip of Argentina and Chile. The huge display allowed my son and I to walk up very close to it… there is a little iceberg there, and he saw the two rocks. He asked me what they were, and I told him that I threw them out there while waiting around!

Filed under the categories: Milford Sound, New Zealand, Nikon D3X, Te Anau, Travel