Miami is a pretty cool place to shoot because it’s an interesting-looking city and there is a ton of water around to get all sorts of shots. I set this one up to be a bit of a longer exposure to smooth out the water and give the clouds a bit of a trippy effect. And, then, of course, adding a little HDR makes it even better!
Here’s one of the last cruises I took before the whole pandemic thang. That’s a view of Miami from the water just as we left. It was kind of funny… this cruise was with the Summit people, which are a lot like the TED people. In other words, lots of politically active and passionate people mostly on the left. Anyway, on the night we left, Trump got elected… so then everyone on the boat was just so upset and crying for days and days… it was a wild scene!
I took this photo a few years ago after I got off a cruise there in Miami. Isn’t it hard to imagine going on a cruise again? I mean, maybe in a few years when they have all this infection stuff settled… but right now, no way. I know a lot of people out there are having problems with this shit economy, but you can always be thankful that you don’t own a cruise line, hey?
In today’s video for Passport Members I show how I am getting pictures of snowflakes on black wool gloves in Antarctica while camping out in the Dry Valleys. This is the seventh part of some Antarctica videos I have created for Passport Members, so enjoy!
If you want to jump to the “Lesson” part of this video where I talk about shooting snowflakes, then go right to the middle. In the beginning, I talk about peeing in a bottle and in the end I show the extremely awkward way of getting into and out of the little hole entrance for our tent.
I visited this lighthouse many times while there in Key Biscayne. On my final night, there was a great sunset so I got the quadcopter up to see if I could get a better shot. It turned out to be 100x better than the shot on the ground. My first idea was to line up the sun with where the light comes out of the lighthouse. It looks pretty good but felt a bit forced. I then moved it over just to the left and thought it looked a lot better.
If you listen to Tim Ferris’ podcast, I highly recommend the one with Terry Crews. I’m listening to it now with my son… we’re both really enjoying it. It’s very inspirational!
If I ever moved to the beach, I think these sunsets would be the main reason! I am such a night owl that I often sleep in and miss half the sunrises. So, I think I’d probably have to settle on a house that faces towards the west so I could see more sunsets! One great thing about Key Biscayne is that it’s such a long narrow island that you get to see both.
I use Aurora HDR 2018 on most of my images so I thought I’d share my latest post processing techniques. Bracketed images, a single RAW, HDR Enhance, Smart Tone, top and bottom tuning are all covered here… and few other tricks too. 🙂
Before I made this trip, I had a great plan to go running every day on the beach. I’m great at making plans, but not always so great in the actual execution! Well, for the first few days, I did run on the beach. I started up at the Ritz-Carlton where I was staying and ran about a mile down here. I don’t really like beach-running when the sand is soft. It seems to require 4x the effort to fight through the sand. It’s way too much work for exercise, and I know that sounds silly. It mostly just makes me very tired very quickly and sends me into a shame spiral. Anyway, every day I ended up down here and I took photos each time. My favorite one was this one, taken with the drone.
Even though I’ve lived in the semi-British world here in New Zealand for the past 6 years, I am still flummoxed by British sports. Here is how I feel when watching almost any of their sports.
Tane looks cute at any F-Stop, so he’s probably not an ideal person for testing this lens. If you can possibly avert your eyes, look at the background. I know, it’s tough, but do it for the sake of lens testing. Look at that amazing blurry area back there. In fact, if you look at his ears, even they are out of focus.
It’s a great lens for sure. It’s all manual focus, and I have put the lens up here on my Kit.com page.
They’re not doing this cruise any more, but Summit has other events and goodies going on. You can see more at their website in that linky!
This was a weird scene for sure! This was the Summit at Sea, where we took a cruise with all these “TED Speaker” kinda people. For some reason, on this cruise, they would not serve ANY alcohol until 6 PM. I’ve never heard of such a thing… and we were in international waters. Quentin Tarantino was on the boat too, and he said something funny about this bar on the boat called “Margaritaville” where you can’t get any drinks during the day, and not even any margaritas for 24 hours a day! And, also, this was days after the election, so there was a lot of pent-up-TED-angst, so when the bars were open, people finally went nuts, like caged animals set free.
Join me for an all-expenses paid trip here to New Zealand to take photos for a week and join my photo adventure workshop! Yes, flights and all. This contest is available all around the world and anyone can win. I’ll give you three steps here and tell you how it works. And if you don’t win that one, maybe you’ll win a chance to come see Hans Zimmer in concert with me in the best seats in the house amidst 40,000 fans in Frankfurt, Germany’s Commerzbank-Arena. Two great prizes there, both celebrating these 10 Photo Walks I’m doing across Europe in 10 great cities. Join me for these free events!
What do you do to enter?
First, if you think any of this sounds cool, tell your friends! We have more about the photo contest at 80stays.treyratcliff.com
Second, on that site, you can see links to all the contests and more along the top! I said two great prizes… not quite accurate as there are actually more!
Third, and this is not a requirement, but a fun thing – if you’re in the area, RSVP to one of our free photo walks coming up in Europe. You’ll also see links to all 10 events at the site above.
Good luck, and I hope you win! You’ll be on a shiny new Air New Zealand bird, heading here to Queenstown for a week of some of the most insanely beautiful scenery in the world. I’ll show you all my secret spots and you’ll have a great time at our workshop… stay in a beautiful hotel, have great food and wine, take photo walks all through the southern alps, and meet my dog Blueberry (a real highlight hehe!). Anyway, I’m packing my bags now to come to Europe for 40 days for these photo walks (spending 4 days in each city as our bus of merry traveling artists weave our way from Lisbon to Barcelona to Milan to Paris to London to Amsterdam to Berlin to Vienna to Budapest, then jumping on a plane to end the tour in Moscow) – sound exhausting eh? Okay gonna take a nap now while my camera batteries charge.
See you all soon, and best of luck again on the contest. We thought it would be a fun way to get the whole world involved even if you can join me in Europe.
Also, completely unrelated but if you have a Rift, be sure to get the game Robo Recall. It’s incredible! I need to make a list of my favorite VR games and get them up on the site… keep reminding me! 🙂
I feel like I don’t even need a description for this photo, as I can’t say anything more than the title. Well, maybe some background. I was on this TED-like cruise called Summit at Sea. I kept running into these monks over and over again, mostly on the elevator. We would always have very deep conversations that would only last 3 minutes. Then, one evening as the sun was setting, I saw my two friends taking photos of one another like a couple of schoolgirls – I thought it was great!
Have you subscribed to our free newsletter? Here’s a link to the recent one that talks more about this unique cruise.
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So, I went on an intense cruise called Summit at Sea that had a 5-day social media blackout. I was there with two of my best friends, Chris and Rene, and we set sail for an amazing week that was supposed to be a cross between TED Talks and Burning Man on the open seas. We weren’t disappointed. Who was on the boat with us (among other people)? Quentin Tarantino, Kendrick Lamar, Eric Schmidt (previous two might be roommates), Herbie Hancock, Erin Brockovich, will.i.am, Norman Lear, Thievery Corp, John Scully, Tony Hawk, Bob Pittman, Princess Lucaj, Gary Veeee, Geordi LaForge, Steve Jurvetson, and Bob Roth (who I wanted to meditate with!).
This photo I took on the first evening there, just after arrival…
