Stuck in Customs – Page 358 – Trey Ratcliff's Travel Photography blog with daily inspiration to motivate you!

Stuck In Customs

My daily travel blog to inspire and get you motivated!

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25
Sep 2014 : Thursday
See More Photos of:  New Zealand, Travel

The Frozen Grasses

Strange Visual Phenomenon?

What is the strangest visual thing you’ve ever seen? This little scene I describe below is one of them.

Daily Photo – The Frozen Grasses

About five seconds after I took this photo below, the sun came up over a mountain and made everything start to crystallize. The sun gave every little bit a different color of the rainbow. What was even more fascinating was while walking along the path with the sun, there was a moving set of rainbow drops everywhere. It looked like a thousand sparkling diamonds… never seen anything like it!

I tried to take a photo of it, but it just didn’t work out right… You kinda had to be there! That’s a terrible thing to say, I know… but maybe I’ll get better and can figure out a way to capture it next time!

The Frozen Grasses

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2014-05-01 09:47:30
  • CameraILCE-7R
  • Camera MakeSony
  • Exposure Time1/13
  • Aperture14
  • ISO100
  • Focal Length33.0 mm
  • FlashOff, Did not fire
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias-0.3

Comments
24
Sep 2014 : Wednesday
See More Photos of:  Travel

Coasting Through Zion

Thanks for the Testimonials

I wanted to thank you for adding new testimonials to Trey’s Complete HDR Tutorial and the Lightroom Tutorial. We recently swapped out our commenting system to Discus and we lost all the other ones! This sucks… sorry about that. But now we are good to go again. Today’s daily photo is one of the ones edited in the Lightroom Tutori

Daily Photo – Coasting Through Zion

I made a mistake in Zion, I now realize, thank you, dear reader of the blog! I posted another photo from Zion and some cool things I saw while there. Well, apparently, I completely missed most of the goodness! There is a bus that you take that goes up a road to show you all the cool stuff. I usually hate buses and was confused by the bus-thing. I didn’t know what it was and I just decided I didn’t like it. This was dumb of me because I should have tried to find out more. Well, a reason to go back, I suppose!

Coasting Through Zion

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2013-08-19 00:27:43
  • CameraNEX-7
  • Camera MakeSony
  • Exposure Time1/1250
  • Aperture4.5
  • ISO100
  • Focal Length13.0 mm
  • FlashOff, Did not fire
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias

Comments
23
Sep 2014 : Tuesday
See More Photos of:  New Zealand, Travel

The Surprise Lake on Hole 1

Speaking of Portal

Any of you fans of that game Portal? Are they going to make a new one sometime soon I hope?

Daily Photo – The Surprise Lake on Hole 1

A few weeks ago we had an amazing amount of rain in Central Otago. The day it cleared up, I went over to The Hills to take photos with my friends Maura and Cliff. We walked around all over the place and I was surprised to see these lakes that formed all over the place. I’m always a sucker for a clean reflection. It reminds me of a secret portal to the mirror-world.

The Surprise Lake on Hole 1

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2014-08-12 15:42:02
  • CameraILCE-7R
  • Camera MakeSony
  • Exposure Time1/2500
  • Aperture4
  • ISO160
  • Focal Length45.0 mm
  • FlashOff, Did not fire
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias-2.3

Comments
22
Sep 2014 : Monday
See More Photos of:  Glenorchy, New Zealand, Travel

The Earthmelting Truck

Grunge HDR

If you’ll notice, I haven’t been doing much grungy HDR stuff lately. I never did that much back in the day, but I did dabble in it. I could do more, I suppose, but I don’t really seek out all those abandoned kinda places. I don’t know why. I know some people really like that, and that’s cool. But I do find I end up going to pretty, beautiful places rather than rundown grungy places. I’ve never really thought about this until I wrote this paragraph, but it is an interesting thing I am notic

Daily Photo – The Earthmelting Truck

We recently found a new place thanks to a hot tip. This amazing truck that is being swallowed by the earth is about 30 minutes past Glenorchy on the way to Kerloch (I think I’ve spelled that wrong — my apologies). If you start looking along the side of the road for a dilapidated shack, then you’re on the right track. It’s just past a very tiny bridge. You can just park there and walk to the back side to get a view of this. The people that lived in that house didn’t seem to mind that I was in their back yard.

The Earthmelting Truck

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2014-08-10 14:30:26
  • CameraILCE-7R
  • Camera MakeSony
  • Exposure Time1/250
  • Aperture4
  • ISO200
  • Focal Length11.0 mm
  • FlashOff, Did not fire
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias

Comments
21
Sep 2014 : Sunday
See More Photos of:  Milford Sound, New Zealand, Travel

Late Morning at Mitre Peak

Edited with Macphun

This photo below is one of many I have done lately with Macphun software. See more in my .

Daily Photo – Late Morning at Mitre Peak

If visiting Milford Sound, one great piece of advice is not to go all the way to the water’s edge at low tide. Some of the best shots are from the still reflection shots of the puddles that form from the retreating water. There are hundreds of these little pools. Some are clear without rocks and others have rocks. I decided to move around until I found a nice sequence of them.

Late Morning at Mitre Peak

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2014-08-16 09:04:20
  • CameraILCE-7R
  • Camera MakeSony
  • Exposure Time1/10
  • Aperture18
  • ISO125
  • Focal Length44.0 mm
  • FlashOff, Did not fire
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias-2

Comments
20
Sep 2014 : Saturday
See More Photos of:  Morocco, Photography Tips, Travel

The Lines of the Sahara

Using Humans in Landscape Photos

Whenever I put a human or capture a human in a photo, I am reminded of how much it adds to the sense of scale. I’m a bit hard on myself, I suppose, because I lament that I don’t think of it more often. But then I recall that I should stop all that fretting about the past. Maybe I’ll remember to do it more in the future, maybe I won’t! It doesn’t matter.

Daily Photo – The Lines of the Sahara

One of the hardest types of photos I took while in the desert were fully zoomed in at 300mm while on camelback. The motion a camel makes is incongruous with good photo-taking. I would try to time my shutters to the strange apogees of the camel sways. I even thought about riding side-saddle. I think I saw someone do that in Lawrence of Arabia (which I’ve seen about 10 times), so it seemed like something that could be done. But I quickly analyzed the physics of that in relation to my torso and skeletal-photo-position and thought it would only add to chaos I was trying to abate.

The Lines of the Sahara

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2014-03-08 05:54:02
  • CameraILCE-7R
  • Camera MakeSony
  • Exposure Time1/320
  • Aperture16
  • ISO400
  • Focal Length300.0 mm
  • FlashOff, Did not fire
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias

Comments
19
Sep 2014 : Friday
See More Photos of:  New Zealand, Travel

Another Amazing Sunset at Bendemeer

Burning Man

Here’s a new video I made from Burning Man. How did I make the animations? Check out the Animoto Review here on the site.

Seeing Nature for What it Is

Sometimes while I’m taking peaceful sunset photos like this, I feel like I can see the matrix for what it is. It’s quite meditative and creative. I think more and more people are discovering some of these secrets of the Earth through photography. Maybe you know what I mean.

Daily Photo – Another Amazing Sunset at Bendemeer

This is a new housing development area near Arrowtown and Queenstown. They have huge tracks of land (to use a Monty Python reference from yesterday) and there are hardly any houses built there yet. That makes it kind of awesome and perfect for photography. When the grasses get long in the late summer, they blow in the wind. It’s almost like you can see the wind itself while standing there.

Another Amazing Sunset at Bendemeer

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2013-02-10 11:23:07
  • CameraNIKON D800
  • Camera MakeNikon
  • Exposure Time1/60
  • Aperture16
  • ISO200
  • Focal Length14.0 mm
  • FlashOff, Did not fire
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias+1

Comments
18
Sep 2014 : Thursday
See More Photos of:  Iceland, Travel

Road to the Sunset in Iceland

What’s in Trey’s Bag?

I’m sure many of you have clicked the links at the top of the blog that show the kind of stuff I carry around on a daily basis, but here is a video you may have missed! 🙂

Walter Mitty

Can I say something that most of you will probably disagree with? Sorries in advance! But, for the life of me, I just cannot like that Walter Mitty movie. I found it to be entirely silly, ridiculous, and preposterous in almost every way. Now, nothing wrong with that, I say. I love a good silly, ridiculous, and preposterous movie. For example, give me Monty Python all day long! I don’t know… there were just so many scenes in there I found to be redonk… oh well. Almost everyone I tell this to completely disagrees with me, but, that’s okay I supp

Daily Photo – Road to the Sunset in Iceland

Here’s another photo that I edited with the new Lightroom Tutorial. This one is in the bonus bit, as I did it during the Live Q&A bit. I think it’s pretty cool what you can accomplish with just Lightroom. The reason I was thinking about that silly Walter Mitty movie is this road reminds me of something he might skateboard down.

Road to the Sunset in Iceland

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2010-06-13 00:40:15
  • CameraNIKON D3X
  • Camera MakeNikon
  • Exposure Time1/10
  • Aperture8
  • ISO200
  • Focal Length28.0 mm
  • FlashNo Flash
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias-1

Comments
17
Sep 2014 : Wednesday
See More Photos of:  China, Travel

Farming in Deep Southern China

What is The Arcanum to Trey and Pete?

Here’s a new video we just released!

Textures Tutorial

If you pop over to the Stuck In Customs Store you’ll see the Textures Tutorial. This is how I accomplished today’s photo. Actually, that Textures Tutorial is the FIRST video tutorial I ever made here for the site. I was thinking about re-doing it early next year and include all-new textures. Let me know if you’d have an interest in this!

Daily Photo – Farming in Deep Southern China

We found this amazing area by accident! We were having some strange weather situations and this made us change our schedule about. After coming down from a mountain that resembles one of those spires you see in the distance, we took a side-road (a dirt road) down through some farms to work our way down to the river, as we were to take a bamboo raft back to the little town of Yangshao.

Farming in Deep Southern China

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2014-06-07 12:54:09
  • CameraILCE-7R
  • Camera MakeSony
  • Exposure Time1/125
  • Aperture9
  • ISO200
  • Focal Length24.0 mm
  • FlashOff, Did not fire
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias

Comments
16
Sep 2014 : Tuesday
See More Photos of:  Travel, Yellowstone

The Foggy Mists of Yellowstone

Yellowstone or Yosemite?

Which of these two is your favorite? I’ve only been to Yosemite once, but I’ve been to Yellowstone maybe 9 times. I just don’t know Yosemite that well yet, but I know it is the opposite with many people!

Daily Photo – The Foggy Mists of Yellowstone

This is a very strange area of Yellowstone and I’m not even sure how I found it. But I happened to find it quite early in the morning, just after sunrise. I walked and walked through this forest to find interesting tree shapes. I walked and jumped over tiny hot streams the flowed here and there. As they flowed about, they would kick up more mist and fog to add to the overall scene.

The Foggy Mists of Yellowstone

Photo Information

  • Date Taken2009-06-29 13:02:56
  • CameraNIKON D3X
  • Camera MakeNikon
  • Exposure Time1/60
  • Aperture22
  • ISO100
  • Focal Length34.0 mm
  • FlashNo Flash
  • Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
  • Exposure Bias

Comments