Special Prizes for European Photo Walks!

We have all sorts of great prizes (even if you are not there and just following on the internet) of our European Photo Walk Tour! We have some great online contests and more. And yes, we’ll try to bring the Photo Walk tour to a place near you soon! 🙂

Daily Photo – Outside the Bus

Believe it or not, when we pulled up to the Washington DC Photo Walk, this was the view outside our tour-bus window! How cool, eh? I remember DC was a big mess (the photo walk went great). But we had no internet, and I was trying to upload all this stuff… so I had to uber all around town to find a good coffee shop. That is one of those things that took hours more than I expected… then I wanted to go for a jog and barely squeezed that in… then I was getting ready for the photo walk and I realized I forgot to eat all day! And this was coming off back-to-back night-to-night photo walks in New York and Philidelphia! This time, in Europe, I’m gonna pace myself a bit better.

Outside the Bus

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2015-09-08 08:51:42
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/40
• Aperture8
• ISO125
• Focal Length16.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias-0.3

DC Highlight Video

Here’s highlights from our great photo walk there. Thanks again everyone for coming out! 🙂

Daily Photo – A Duck at the Lincoln Memorial

Here’s one of the fun shots I got during the DC Photowalk. I was laying on the stomach with my daughter Scarlett right beside me. I let her help… all kids love taking photos of animals. It’s a great way to get them started.

A Duck at the Lincoln Memorial

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2015-09-08 12:13:47
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/15
• Aperture5.6
• ISO250
• Focal Length101.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+1.7

Don’t forget about Flatbooks!

Jump over to Flatbooks.com and see some of the latest offerings there! I think you’ll find something you like! 🙂

Daily Photo – Entering the Air and Space Museum

This was the last shot I got with my tripod at the museum before it was so rudely removed from my person by the security staff. I still get angry about this… I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. I think I get most angry because it is so illogical. Also, I get angry because a lot of this nonsense comes from lawyers, who are busy protecting themselves from other lawyers. People like me get caught up in their little war of lawsuits…

Entering the Air and Space Museum

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2010-01-24 17:26:38
• CameraNIKON D3X
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time1/30
• Aperture11
• ISO100
• Focal Length16.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

Processing Photos Out-of-Order

Many of you know that I process photos in random order. Chronological order seems as arbitrary as any other order, so I just go with random! So, I happened to recently process two photos from the new Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. So, here is one of the shuttle below, and you’ll see another from the museum in the next few days.

Daily Photo – The Shuttle in Repose

This was a hard shot to process — I’ll be honest! Some people got to watch this during one of our live event last month. That was exciting and scary because I had never worked on this one before. I let the audience vote on which one to process, and this one was the choice!

It was particularly hard because of all the shots were handheld. One thing I noted is that if the long exposures are blurred — then you really need to forget about bringing that one into Photomatix. It will just mess up the whole process!

The Shuttle in Repose

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2010-01-24 17:30:59
• CameraNIKON D3S
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time1/125
• Aperture6.7
• ISO9000
• Focal Length15.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias-1

More From DC and the A&S Museum

I don’t post a lot of photos from DC, but this reminded me of some favorite shots from the Air and Space Museum. You can see the Washington DC category shots here.

Daily Photo – The Lincoln Memorial

I got this photo in a hurry. I bet I raised a few security alarms too because of my unusual behavior.

I didn’t have much time, so I had my wife drive nearby and park illegally on the curb for a few minutes. She wasn’t a fan of that, but let’s not talk about this right now. So, I jumped out of the car, hauled my tripod out of the trunk, and dashed across the green hill towards the memorial. I grabbed photos in a rushed way and dashed back to the car and sped away.

Twitter and Twitter Lists

Follow @TreyRatcliff

It’s been a while since I mentioned this stuff, and I know a bunch of y’all are on Twitter. A while back, I put together a bunch of “Twitter Lists” that will be helpful if you are new to Twitter or simply looking for more people to follow.

Daily Photo – Underwing

Here’s another handheld job from the Air & Space Museum in Washington DC. I sent out a tweet a few weeks ago and got in touch with the gal that works in the public affairs office… I twitter-charmed her into giving me the thumbs up to use a tripod next time! It took 140 delicate characters to make that happen… there are still more steps, but I am well on the way to getting proper permission. It’s too hard to sneak a tripod into this place… just forget it… armed guards and that sort of thing…

Reminder on Zooming-In

If you want to get the original size photo, or simply zoom in to see some details, follow these steps:

• First, click on the image, and that will take you to the SmugMug gallery.
• Then, look closely at the top. You’ll see an “O”, which is usually to the right of X2 or X3. Click on that “O” – it means Original-Size

Daily Photo – The Blackbird in the Hangar

You may not even really need to be into planes to know about the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. The way those letters and numbers fit together is almost poetic, isn’t it? SR-71. There is a melody to it that flows in a nice way. It almost makes me wonder if there is some military muse that comes up with some of the better names for these vehicles.

In the background there, waaay in the rear area, you can see the space shuttle. What a cool place! Of course, this is the new Air & Space Museum in DC. By luck, there was a rail here for me to secure my camera to take this HDR.

Daily Photo – Landing in the Air & Space Museum

I love this place! This was about the only place I was allowed to use my tripod (on the outside), so I spent a bit of time hunting about for best ways to capture the amazing building.

I sent the Air and Space Museum a tweet to ask if I could use my tripod.  They responded and sent me to a FAQ.  I didn’t even have to go to the FAQ to know what it should say.  I think, frankly, it would have just been easier if they had tweeted back a “no”.

So, as you can see in the collection below, I did the best I could with a few handheld HDRs.

There are a few handheld tricks I employ:

• Lock your elbows inward, on top of your abdomen.
• Hold your breath like a sniper
• Increase your ISO so it takes the multiple exposures as fast as possible
• Pray

The Inner Sanctum of the Cavernous Museum

The following photos were all previously published here on the site, but I thought it might be fun to put them all here in the same post.

My Best Tweet Ever

Some of you follow me on Twitter to get regular useful and useless updates throughout the day. Sometimes I check back to see which tweets get “ReTweeted” the most. By far, the best tweet ever was:

@TreyRatcliff This guy traveled the world in the early 1900s & captured it all in COLOR http://bit.ly/apc4MK

If you follow me, I promise never to tell you when I am standing in line at a coffee shop. I try to do 33% inspirational tweets about interesting art and cultural finds, 33% connecting people with others, and 33% links to my own personal latest works. The last 1% is “Wildcard” (said in the Charlie voice from It’s Always Sunny).

Daily Photo – Aerophilia

Is aerophilia a word? Probably not. People that are really into planes probably have a very specific word for this, and the “wrong” word probably really irritates them… so I apologize in advance.

This wondrous place is the new Air and Space Museum in DC. I thought I knew a lot about planes until I got here. I would recognize this and that, but the whole gestalt of the place was completely overwhelming. Overwhelming in an awesome way, of course.

I only took the Nikon D3S in here (see my Nikon D3S Review) because they would not allow tripods. The D3S is so much better at quick shots with low noise. All of my HDRs in here were handheld, so I had to be sure that I took the photos quickly and with very little noise.

Meet me at OpenCamp!

The Powers That Be talked me into speaking at OpenCa.mp, which is Aug 27-29 in Dallas. Who is OpenCamp for? As the website says, “Webmasters and web developers, bloggers, podcasters, social media enthusiasts and anyone interested in web content creation!” This is put together by the same people who did WordCamp Dallas and DrupalCamp Dallas. This should be one of the biggest events for bloggers this year – so I hope you can come out!

Cali Lewis, one of the organizers, recently mentioned OpenCamp in her recent Geekbrief video. You can get a full list of the speakers on the OpenCamp Page… along with me will be Chris Pirillo, John P, and many others.  I’ve heard Leo Laporte may even join the festivities… that would be a lot of fun to hang out with him again!

Right after OpenCamp, I’ll be heading out to Burning Man in the middle of the Black Rock Desert. That will be a wild time!

Exclusive! Video to be released on Abduzeedo!

The crew over at Abduzeedo.com grabbed the Exclusive of my new video release on Friday. It’s a bit different than anything I have ever done… I hope you like it. I’ll link over there on Friday so you can be among the first to see it.

New Prints Available

If you go over to the Prints area of the site, you can get links to all the latest prints to be released. I only release about 1% or 2% of the works as Limited Edition Numbered Prints. One of them is featured today over in a new video over at OneMansBlog.com. That print should come available soon.

Daily Photo – Univac

I’m such a nerd and I love this computer.

My background is computer science and math, so I’ve always been into computers. This UNIVAC was just hitting its stride around the time I was born, and Moore’s Law was kind enough to keep the doublings at a manageable rate so it wasn’t a whole lot faster when I got my own first computer! I think I started with the Timex Sinclair 99 before getting into the C-64, then a whole host of Amigas before getting into the world of PCs (see these old vintage ads of computer stuff I tweeted about yesterday). Anyway, I’ll try not to geek out too much here!

This photo was taken at the new Air and Space Museum in DC. There is an area in the back with all the rockets that also had the computers that were used alongside them at mission control. So, if you have any geek in you at all, I really recommend it.