Android Development of Stuck On Earth

Want to see some screenshots of the progress so far? Visit this thread on Google+ to see! 🙂

Another shout out to the QT Sydney

Thanks again to the QT Sydney (a photo of my room) for hosting Tom and I! Stephen Howard did a great job showing us around and getting us here into the State Theater where we took the photo below.

I’m still enjoying Pinterest too!

I go to Pinterest almost every single day to pin a few things. I think my ratio there is I pin about 20% my own work and re-pin 80% other work. I know lots of people pin here too! If you like, drop your Pinterest page link below so others can find you ! 🙂

Exciting!

Thanks again for all the enthusiasm about the new video that you can sign up for now on the Landscape and Travel Photography Tutorial: New Zealand page! You can probably get the idea there that this thing is super-high quality. And, you’ll get to watch me do all kinds of hi-rez edits of many photos, including the one I am posting below today! 🙂

It’s finally ready for pre-order!

Pop over to the new Landscape and Travel Photography Tutorial: New Zealand to sign up! Sign up now, and you get several goodies… you’ll save $20 and you’ll get to join a private video Q&A group after launch.

This is really the coolest video we’ve ever made. I think you’ll find the quality and the content to be second-to-none. Really. Just by watching this preview below you’ll get a great idea of the content. Basically, you get 2.5 hours of post processing and an additional 1.5 hours of live-action footage, following me around while I set up for photos.

And… there is the new puppy in the beginning! hehe 🙂

Watch The Show Soon!

Every Monday night at 7 PM PT, 10 PM ET is the weekly show, and tonight we have on a bunch of people from Austin to talk about the photowalk and give away the prizes! I believe we have over 80 to give away, and you’ll get a chance to see a bunch of fun photos from the event. See you soon! 🙂

Are you on Tumblr?

If so, add your link below so others can find you! 🙂

Upgraded my Tumblr Page

I decided to put a little more love into my weak Tumblr effort. I actually really like Tumblr and I see a lot of beautiful things there, at least from the people that I follow currently.

Someone already had the name “Stuckincustoms” (Arg!) so I used TreyRatcliffPhotos.tumblr.com. Enjoy! And thank you to former Texan Annie Werner for the encouragement and help! 🙂

Five New eBooks to Enjoy!

Wow! The authors are really putting out amazing stuff over at Flatbooks.com ! I think you’ll be impressed at all the new work over there and you’ll learn a great many things. Here is a selection of some of the newer books that have recently launched! 🙂

Boneyardby Troy Paiva contains over 60 full sized and zoomable light painted night images, shot in two separate aircraft graveyards, “The Secret Boneyard” and “Aviation Warehouse.” 50 of these images have never been shown before. These are not outtakes or stiffs the author never bothered to do anything with. Half is a body of work from 2008 that has only now been allowed to be displayed publicly by the property owner. The others are a fresh set of A-list images shot in the summer of 2012.

 

 

Travel Photography Exposed by Mike Marlowe is a collection of thoughts, examples and practical tips on life as a roaming travel photographer. This is not an academic theory book; this is a collection of no-nonsense advice from a photographer that does this every day. More importantly, it’s about helping you to do the same. Whether it’s a one-off two-week trip or you want to live your life on the road, this ebook will help you get on the right path.

 

 

Seeing the Unseen – How to Photograph Landscapes at Night by Alister Benn is a complete guide to night photography. This book doesn’t just provide the photographer with a quick set of rule-of-thumb generalizations that make sweeping assumptions and teach you nothing; instead the author shows you how to assess the light that is available and make meaningful and breath-taking images as well as any professional.

This book is suitable for all levels of experience – leading the beginner through the fundamentals, but stretching the boundaries of very experienced night photographers with contemporary advanced techniques.

 

 

A first for Flatbooks – an in-depth video-only tutorial! From Scott Detweiler, author of Conceptual Portraiture comes an hour-long video called Creation of Succubuson creating his portrait titled The Succubus. Using Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4 we will step thought the complete workflow that was used to create this image from scratch.

 

 

At 3,310 meters, Cusco ranks within a thousand feet of the highest and most inhospitable cities on the planet – yet everyone from the millennia-old Killke culture to modern adventurers the world over has somehow made their way to this mountain Mecca. This book, The Travel Companion: From Cusco to Machu Picchuby Brian Hoffsis will take you on a journey through Peru from Cusco to Machu Picchu, with 48 photos and individual stories.

Why this is cool

Hitherto, both Facebook and Google+ limited your photos to 2048 pixels across. This was depressing to me and other photographers that take HUGE photos, many of mine over 7000 pixels across. I share a new, original-sized photo here every day on the blog, and all my work is Creative Commons Noncommercial.

Basically, I want people to have the original-sized photo to enjoy! I know many other photographers disagree with me and they only want to share tiny images with huge watermarks using horrible fonts. That’s okay. This isn’t for them.

But if you’re like me, and you want to upload the original size images to Google and also share on Google+, well now you can!

Steady Progress of Google+ and Photos

I notice many various products are starting to gel together at Google. It’s a little clumsy here as the streams are colliding, but I think it will become more efficient over time. For example, the Google+ stream and Google Drive used to be totally different products, but now they are coming together. Same with Search and YouTube and Calendar and everything. It takes a while to get your head around because we are used to a bunch of Single-Purpose Silos, but when you start to use them all together and think about it like that, it makes sharing and life-integration easier.

For example, I now use my Android phone to take a video, upload to YouTube, then share to a private family circle on Google+. All my family isn’t on Google+ yet, so it uses Google mail to send it around. I wasn’t experiencing that kind of integration a year ago! I used to do one thing, then another thing, then another thing, then email everyone after I put together various silos. This is the way a lot of people still think about the internet… using many silos to do discrete tasks and then piecing it all together on your own, but it doesn’t have to be like that. I know I sound like a Google fanboy, but, Jesus, I use a lot of their products. It’s like saying you’re an Oxygen fanboy.

How-to Upload Full-Rez Photos to Google+

1) Go to your Google+ settings at www.google.com/settings/plus

2) Check the box indicated in the screenshot below.

3) Get on Google+ and go upload a photo! Now the full size will go up there!

Be sure to Note

Any photo greater than 2048 pixels will go against your Google Drive allotment, and you will need to buy more space if you want more!

Bonus Information – Using the Photo on your Blog and URL Analysis

Here’s something I discovered by accident. It’s geeky but I was excited by it.

I was trying to figure out, “Okay WHERE exactly is my image being stored on Google?” Well that part is a bit confusing. I r-clicked the image in the Google+ display to get the source and it gave me:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-qC_X6syDOPw/UUujxK_5AeI/AAAAAAAGEYw/zxsYDVN66Sw/s1161/Trey+Ratcliff+-+Milford+Scene.jpg

Aha! See that “s1161”? That is the horizontal dimensions. It chose that dynamically based on the width of my window. So, by simply changing that number, you can have Google serve you up whatever size you want!

If you make it “s0”, it wil be full-size! And my friend Dave Veffer says “if you do ‘s0-d’ it forces a download so appending -d at the end of the size specification will make the image download…useful in some situations”.

For example, this image is actually 5845×3204 pixels – we get the original with that “s0” in the URL:

So the full rez is: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-LJpqE2A5z8E/UUujxFpc-tI/AAAAAAAGEZM/oNvVoOYoqMw/s0/Trey+Ratcliff+-+A+Tableau+Vivant+of+Horses+in+Iceland.jpg

More Google Drive Updates Coming Soon

I got a note from a gentleman at Google Drive that says there are More New Updates coming in a week or so… ways to embed with various image sizes, permanent links, and more.

Integrating the images into your Blog

These images that I have below are being served up by Google. Don’t have Google send you a HUGE image that you then downsize using HTML. Have it send you the exact size you want. In this case, I’ve asked for all the images to be 900 pixels across. I’ve then hyperlinked to their actual size on the Google servers.

What Could They Improve On?

Well, I’m still using SmugMug to serve up my daily images here on the blog. See my SmugMug Review for more. I do this because:

1) People like to order limited edition prints (thanks everyone btw!) 🙂 It’s very easy to begin the print-ordering process through SmugMug
2) I like how clicking on an image takes you to a proper portfolio or slideshow. I can’t figure out a good way to do that using a Google Photo Album yet.
3) I have a feeling that SmugMug is about to make a major update to their whole UI. (Why doesn’t Google just buy SmugMug and make my life easier!!) 🙂

For example, I’ll put the “Daily Photo” below so you can see the difference. If you click on the photo, you go into my nice portfolio view. Under the photo is the friendly SmugMug link to get a print.

Ways for Google Photos / Drive to Improve – Your ideas?

I’m interested in your ideas too. Here are a few of mine:

1) I’d like the automatic Google Photo upload to just take the full rez photo if I click a checkbox (instead of having to do this Google-Drive-end-run). If you have space on Google Drive and don’t mind your photos taking up all the GB, then just let me.

2) I’d like better album / portfolio management. Now that I have photos in Google+ photos (many at 2048) and now more in Google Drive (at original size), it’s becoming a terrible problem or organization. I’m not totally anal, but I also feel too scattered and that makes me digitally-uneasy!

3) Your ideas? Drop them in the comments! 🙂

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