There’s less than a week left to register for The Art of Photography. It’s built for beginners and intermediate levels, and I know you’ll have a great time!
One of the MOST common questions is: “If I’m registered and I miss the live part, can I still download?” Yes, of course! 🙂
Thanks again to our sponsors HDRsoft (makers of Photomatix), SmugMug, Nik, and Adorama! We’ll have many great prizes as well – more info on the page above.
Daily Photo – What the Ancient Seamariners Saw
Imagine seeing this if you were one of the great sea explorers of yore!
This is the entrance to Milford Sound from the Tasman Sea. It would have been so amazing to come across this and wonder what it was like up inside the fjord. And then, the captain could just decide to sail up inside and land some boats on the shore. Maybe if they were a little hungry, they could even grab a few Moas and cook ’em up. After a long sea voyage, nothing goes down smoother than a Moa.
I’m gearing up for the live show later today! 🙂 It will be a little wild because I JUST moved into the new place here in New Zealand and I don’t even have my computer set up in the right room yet… so… it might be kinda wheels-off for a bit. We’ll see!
Just watch the blog here and the Live Embedded player will appear if you refresh around 7 PM PT.
Daily Photo – The Skeletal Hallway
While walking through one of the amazing Gaudi homes in Barcelona, we came upon this unique hallway. I didn’t have a tripod for my full-on treatment, so I did my best to see what I could get with a single RAW. Frankly, whenever I am forced into this situation, I’m still pretty happy with what comes from that single shot.
There’s a slight chance I’m going back to Barcelona later this year… if so, I’m going to schedule more time with Gaudi! 🙂
Here’s a quick picture I took with my Android while I was taking some photos.
If you look close, you’ll notice that is my D3S and not my D800. The shot below was with the D800, which means I was… maybe using the D3S for a special project??? I will reveal it soon! 🙂
We have finally moved into the new house here in Queenstown. I was in for less than 24 hours when I decided to get up to the top of this nearby mountain to shoot down on the whole scene. It was a perfect night – a bit cool maybe – but that can be perfect too.
After I took this photo, I went back down the mountain and picked up some Thai food to take home and eat while warming up by the fire! 🙂
I thought this sphere was so unusual when I saw it the first time. There’s a radar under there, but the design of the housing is pretty cool and modern… And it sits in the middle of an awesome adults-only swimming pool on the front of the Disney Fantasy… very cool.
You might notice there are always little changes being made to the “Stuff You Need” page here on the site. And yes, I really do use a Really Right Stuff tripod that I bought over a year ago… it’s a great one!
Daily Photo – Footprints in the Sand
My RRS Tripod: “You promised you would walk beside me forever, and I would always see our footprints together in the sand.”
Me: “During your times of trial and suffering, when you only see one set of footprints, that is when I carried you, my son. That is when I carried you.”
I participated (for a short while) in a little Pinterest Video Fest with Kalebra Kelby and several others… You can find out more about it over there on the right.
The Meta Crop
I think the internet is the best means for an artist to display his work, and you have to constantly adjust your art so that it can be enjoyed in the medium in which it is communicated. For the main blog here at https://stuckincustoms.com, for example, I keep all the images 900 wide because that is the best way to view them in a blog format.
But over at Pinterest, I have about a quarter-million followers (thanks!!), and I want the nice people over there to see my images as big as possible. That means there needs to be a strategic haircut. A mohawk, of sorts. 🙂
So, I went back through some of my favorite photos and gave them a strategic cropping. I’ll add more to the exhibition in the upcoming days.
Just after opening, I received the following comment on one of the photos (thanks!):
Diana *BunnyKissd* Bukowski Mr. Ratcliff I love you! So many people won’t allow their stuff to be pinned, and here you are cropping it to fit! YAY! I won’t ever understand why people think that more exposure on the internet is bad… Oh, and thank you so much for sharing your wonderful photographs with me and the world…
More About Pinterest
I’ve been outspoken in my thoughts on Pinterest. A lot of photographers disagree with me, but they are too busy sticking their fingers in the dyke like The Little Dutch Boy to bother me much more. Once it’s digital, man, it’s out there. You might as well get ahead of it and play along nicely. That’s what I say…
See the photo below? I’ll be editing it live to show how I did it on the last day of the Art of Photography course. You can do it all without Photoshop! I know that will make a lot of people happy that can’t get over the Photoshop-hump. For those people, we will also be talking about Photoshop in another segment to show you the hump doesn’t have to be so bad!
Daily Photo – Lonely Tree in Wanaka
This is one of three tree photos I will publish over the coming weeks. You may remember a previous one where the bottom of the trunk was on fire… that one DID have a bit of Photoshop… We’ll also go over that one in the class.
Watch here on StuckInCustoms.com later today for the live feed for the show! It starts at 7 PM or Your World Time!
Now, I’m by no means an “expert” on processing Aurora photos, but I did pick up a few tricks I’m happy to share. As always, as I figure this stuff out from scratch, I’ll share my results with you 🙂
Daily Photo – The Solar Storm Hits Queenstown
I’ve been awake for two days.
It all started yesterday after I put the kids to bed. I got a Facebook message from Stefan Haworth. It turns out that he and Eden Brackstone were headed out for a little viewing of the big solar storm that was hitting the atmosphere. Down thisaway, it’s called the Aurora Australis. Since I’ve never before seen one (despite countless attempts in Iceland), I was ready to suit up!
And it turns out that one of the best places we saw them was right here in Queenstown! I had a decent view from the place I am staying here at The Commonage, but the clouds were pretty heavy. So, we drove down along Lake Wakatipu until we were just past Wye creek. I got out of the car, let my eyes adjust, then saw colored shafts of light shooting up through the edge of our snow-globe. It wasn’t like I expected! It’s…. hard to explain.
Many people are asking if I still use Photomatix, and the answer is an absolute yes! I use it to process all the photos you see on the site here. If you want to try it yourself, you can read more information here on the Photomatix Review.
I now use Aurora HDR Pro for all of my processing. I worked with Macphun for over a year to build the ultimate HDR software!
Daily Photo – Soft Sunset over the Gentle Stream
Every time I visit this little stream in the northern part of Iceland, it seems exactly the same. It makes me wonder if it ever gets high or low or just flows perfectly all the time.
If it does flow perfectly like this all the time, I’d be tempted to build a house right over it! Wouldn’t it be cool to have a perfect stream just flow right through your home?
I’m sorry I’ve been a few hours late on some of the daily blog posts! I’m working on a huuuuuge personal project, and my time is getting lost in it somewhere… I look up, and thing – OMG I forgot to do the blog post. This has never really happened to me, so, either I am going insane, or something really awesome is coming!
Daily Photo – Alone in the Death Star
I’m sure the architects had fun with this building!
In most ways, it’s a completely inefficient use of space. There is a large atrium with all sorts of strange catwalks and ramps and bridges that go from one useless place to another! But that is also what makes it very cool… almost Escher-like.
This is from the Tokyo International Forum, and if you click on the Tokyo link below, you are sure to see many more photos from this place!
