G+ PhotoWalk in Austin during SXSW! Join me!

It’s that time again!  This year is going to be huge… mega huge!

All skill levels are invited – bring your whole family… it’s great fun for all.

• RSVP on Google Schemer: http://goo.gl/LkaKO
• Secret Google Schemer Invite link: goo.gl/RoxQg <– shhhhhh!
• Date: Saturday, March 10 at 2 PM.
• Location: The hidden G+ lot (TBA!) Note: SXSW badge NOT required
• No SXSW badge required!

We’ll have great prizes and more… stay tuned!

Daily Photo – The Endless Night Streets of Tokyo

The streets are like this all night long.  So, how can you possibly go back to the hotel room?  There’s never a good breaking point.  It is very very hard on my body here, actually, because I usually go back at the point of sheer exhaustion or hunger-breakdown.  The last thing I am thinking about is eating or sleeping… but then, once I give in to my body, that’s ALL I can think about.

Strangest Post Ever

This might be my strangest blog post ever…  well, hey, I figured… why not?  Besides, maybe some of you want to see where I have lived for the past seven years or so…  and yes, we are moving to New Zealand.  More info on that later, I promise! 🙂

Daily Photo – Anyone Wanna Buy a House in Austin?

Contact me at wildcard (at) stuckincustoms.com if you are interested in finding out more… this is just a little teaser with some photos.

It’s in a great area of the hill country, about 15 mins from downtown (with no traffic!) Austin.  The neighborhood is called Jester, and it weaves in and out of a natural preserve.  It’s mega hilly with tons of trees.  Our house, as you can see below from the backyard shot (the fourth one) backs onto a natural preserve… so there is nothing for miles and miles except for little creeks and hilly forests.

The house itself is 5 bedroom, two stories, contemporary design, with all sorts of nice-to-haves.  I’m even leaving the media room with the projector, big screen, and all that stuff.  Anyway, here are a few photos below!

First, here is a photo from the street, looking down the hill at our house on the left.

Second, here is another view of the front of the house at Christmas time.

Below is the family room.  The kids are not included with the house.

Fourth, here is a view off the back deck.  The first dip you see down below leads to a quaint little bubbling brook that tumbles away on rainy mornings, like when I took this photo.

PhotoWalks…

Have you ever been on a PhotoWalk or PhotoWalk curious? I find that MOST people that come to these have never been on one before. So, it’s still a new thing to everyone. It’s generally my plan to come to YOUR city (or area!) to do one of these some day.

Daily Photo – The Cheerful Austin Christmas Dragon

It was a great PhotoWalk in Austin last night! Remember to tag your photos with #gplusaustin — and click around to see some stuff. We had over 100 sign up on plancast, and it got pretty crazy because a lot of people brought friends and family. It was a lot of fun to meet people.

We had one guy come in from South Africa, a gal Karen Hutton come in from California, and many more from all around the Texas area. Everyone we very nice and fun as usual.

I had an autographed 2012 calendar to give away, but I forgot! Sorry that was lame of me… I had it on the floorboard of my car and everything, but with getting the kids out and everything, I forgot – you know how it is.

How I took the shot

Paul Terry Walhus was taking a video the whole time. You can see a bit more about the PhotoWalk and how I took this shot in the video below! Thanks Paul!

Free Austin PhotoWalk

It’s gonna be a great one! Come get all the details and RSVP on this page! 🙂

Daily Photo – The Pennybacker Bridge

This place is right by my house…. I really have no excuse for not going up here almost every night! It takes less than 10 minutes to drive and hike up here… sometimes I actually feel bad about my laziness in this area.

It’s usually not too crowded up here. Maybe a couple or two will sit and watch the sunset. It’s a bit dangerous – a sharp cliff that drops off into the freeway on one side and the water on the other.

Travel Best and Someday???

I started a little Travel page on Google+ and posted a question… If you’re on G+, come on in and let me know the favorite travel memory you have and some place you’d like to go someday…

Daily Photo – Last Night in Austin

I was down on South Congress having a little secret dinner meeting about this new app we are building… and then the sun started to go down. Did I have my camera and tripod? Yes yes… of course.. if you invite me to dinner, chances are I’ll be bringing them along.

I waited for the right moment before running into the middle lane to get this. It was… exciting. Perhaps a bit more exciting than I anticipated… but, I grabbed it, then stopped at a little local market to get some goodies to gnaw on while driving back home…

http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/Portfolio-The-Best/your-favorites/10668747_AuyBk/1575199219_Mqswz

Daily Photo(s): The Airship Isabella

During SXSW, I ended up at a party that had a pretty big steampunk contingent, which is of course very cool to me. I thought I had some good steampunk stuff from Burning Man until I saw these guys…

This was at the Big Bang Bordello Party put on by True Ventures and Tunehopper. It was super-crowded, like most decent SXSW parties, and there was a raucous stage show with a bunch of gals in lingerie and stuff. Is it lame that I hung out with all the steampunk guys in the back? Yes, probably.

Many of them were crew from the Airship Isabella, and they had all kinds of inventive steam-powered goodies. What is Steampunk? Follow that link for the Wikipedia entry… and also, you may remember the Steampunk photo from Burning Man. If you’re looking for a good book in this genre, try “Boneshaker.”

Facebook Likey Likey

All my Facebook friends are full, but if you click “Like” below, then you can stay involved there too. Cool.

New Video of the PhotoWalk

Thanks to Pinhead Doll Productions for this great video !

Award Party Soon!

The coaches/judges on the PhotoWalk are currently going through the submitted photos to the PhotoWalk SXSW Flickr Group. We’ll have a little gathering down at Mozart’s here in Austin to hand out the prizes, hang out, and have a bit of coffee. I’m not sure when that date will be, but I’m sure good man Jack Hollingsworth will help me figure it out!

Daily Photo – The Pub

Now, I did not take this one on the PhotoWalk in Austin — at least, not on THIS PhotoWalk. My apologizes, but this has been a busy time for me and I haven’t had a lot of time to process the most recent photos from SXSW! I do have a few, and they are coming up quite soon.

Also, you can tell this was taken in the winter, because the sign mentions that the rooftop is heated. In the Texas summer, all rooftops are automatically heated!

This reminds me of another photo I took on South Congress of the famous Continental Club. Maybe you have heard of this place?

Video of the PhotoWalk

Thanks to Pinhead Doll Productions for this great video !

Recap of the PhotoWalk

One of our coaches made a nice writeup of the event – see James Brandon’s Blog. There are dozens more out there, but I wanted to mention another random one here by Jackie Danicki.

The Flickr Group for the PhotoWalk

Want to submit some photos from the walk? Visit the PhotoWalk SXSW Flickr Group! There’s also a great discussion area. For example, go read all about the coaches on the PhotoWalk – I thank them very much for their help. Also, the sponsors who are giving out amazing prizes to winners of the contest!

The PhotoWalk Group

Thanks to Mike Connell for taking this photo. An amazing group of hundreds, and we picked up more on the way!

Daily Photo – The New Austin

I don’t think I can do a better job of a writeup than many of the other attendees, so here’s just a quick recap. We began the PhotoWalk by walking down 6th street down towards Momo’s, where we met Leo Laporte and Lisa Bettany for a quick hello. After that, we weaved through the streets together, talking about all sorts of things. I also made about five other stops where I talked through my setup and my shots. On my final shot, we were working our way back towards The Driskill when I took set up for the scene below.

It was a standard HDR with five exposures. I was having some trouble grabbing an autofocus spot, so I just went to manual focus just to be sure the lens didn’t try to re-focus on the multiple exposures.

Thanks again to everyone that came out! It was great getting to know you during the walk, and after the walk back at The Driskill.

My Unexpected 24-70mm Usage

As a landscape photographer, I tend to go wide-angle a lot… Actually, I don’t particularly “like” (not facebook-like, like-like) being called a “landscape photographer” — but I know people like to categorize, and it’s better than being called a “underwear tester”.

So back to the wide-angle bit. I love my Nikon 14-24 lens… and when I go on trips, I expect to use that the most! However, I notice that this current photo-adventure in Iceland, I am using my 24-70 most of the time. About 70% of the time! I find it gets me the compression and framing I need for so many landscape situations.

I’ll have to add more photos soon to my Nikon 24-70 Review here on the site… but it is a very versatile lens!

Daily Photo – A Night with Harley

These bikes are really a fun subject for photography. I get excited every time I head out for one of these events. There are so many styles, customizations, and characters behind them… you never see the same thing twice.

Setting up for these photos is also somewhat of a fun challenge. Getting the right “background” is very important to me… sometimes it just does not work out, so I have to move on and leave a pretty bike alone. The other thing about these bikes, which you don’t realize until you take thousands of photos of them, is that you probably only have a 12.5% chance of getting a good composition and background. I break it down thusly:

• 50% chance that the bike is on its kick stand and leaning the direction you want.  These are just too hard to shoot from the downward-leaning side.
• Compounded by a 50% chance the background area is boring, distracting, inappropriate, or otherwise unpalatable
• Compounded by another 50% chance that the bike will be blocked by another bike, since these tend to travel in flocking patterns, like their riders.

HDR DVD getting closer!

I know there is rampant demand for the HDR DVD, and I wanted to give you an update. The production is about to come to a close, and we can get it to everyone as soon as possible. I’ve been getting early cuts of some of the sections, and they look really sharp. They are filled with many, many examples of my exact workflow, showing how I make layers in Photoshop, how I do my settings in Photomatix, the best order of operations, how I “think through images”, and more. You’ll love it!

To make sure you are the first to know, be sure to sign up for the free newsletter right here!

Daily Photo – The Driskill at Night

Here is one of the photos that I process on the HDR DVD.

During the Austin Workshop, we had a professional team in place to make sure everything went off without a hitch. We started the weekend with a long photowalk through the streets of Austin. I stopped to take a photo of The Driskill hotel, which happened to be the same place we held the actual workshop. I talked through the shot a little bit and what I was trying to accomplish.

During the actual workshop, I did not process this photo. But I have since done so, and I recorded the whole session to be on the DVD as well. It’s one of those classic “problems” where there is a lot of ghosting from the car movement.