This is embarrassing

I believe this French newspaper article is speculating that Google Glass is too geeky for the public, and they chose to put my photo right next to a naked Robert Scoble in the shower. This may be a new internet-low for me… not sure where the link is!

Daily Photo – Bathwater Warm Pool at Sunset

I didn’t actually get in this water, but I was imagining that this was exactly the same as my body temperature. It just kinda looks like that, doesn’t it?

I took this photo at the Disney resort on Oahu. I didn’t even stay here… just stopped by for a few hours with Tom to take photos! It’s very pretty there… certainly worth a visit.

Filed under the categories: Hawaii, Oahu, Travel

Seeing in 3D Again?

Did you miss the Hangout Show #76 when I talked to Thomas Hawk about this? We both see out of one eye, and we talked a bit about it towards the beginning of the show. To see that episode (or others you may like), go to My YouTube Channel and go find that playlist for “Trey’s Variety Hour” — then show #76 should be close to the top!

Daily Photo – Another Max Patte Statue

The Hills Golf Course is covered with these amazing sculptures! I think they have a good thing going here, and I hope they keep adding more and more statues. With all these statues and whatnot, it reminds me a bit of a miniature golf course for grownups! These statues are not on every hole, but they are elegantly placed here and there. Also, they seem to all be set up for really good photo ops as well.

Filed under the categories: Arrowtown, New Zealand, Queenstown, Travel

Are you taking more photos per week in 2013 than 2012? How about 2010? My guess is yes. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a pro or just a casual photographer — it’s really crazy how much visual data we are all generating. It’s awesome, but I know you already have the same problem I do. It’s hard to organize and edit all those photos!

When I started taking photos with my iPhone a few years ago (I’ve since switched to Android) I started taking 10x more photos per week. And just wait till more and more people get Glass; the number of photos will go up another order of magnitude. I’m taking about 100 pictures a day with it, mostly because it’s so much more convenient than pulling out my mobile phone! And, if you’re a photographer, you’re always seeing awesome little compositions that you just can’t ignore. I’m COMPELLED to take a photo!

No matter how good your workflow, you just end up with an ever-growing burden of photos. Pros have this problem, but even we have workflow issues!

So, along comes this exciting new announcement from Google – that they are using their massive server farms to intelligently organize and post-process photos for us. It looks really smart! I can just upload (which is automatic if you turn that on with your mobile phone) dozens or hundreds of photos, and it automatically puts the best photos in the front. It knows which are the best by analyzing human aesthetics in other popular photos! If I don’t agree with its suggestions (or post-processing!) I can undo those bits and make them my own. But it’s like having an assistant that does all the organizing all for me – and an assistant that gets smarter all the time.

Displacing Lightroom?

I think if you’re a casual photographer, this is a compelling new option! It’s free. It’s smart. And it will only get smarter. I notice that one problem casual photographers have with Lightroom is that things still get unorganized. It takes a workflow (and perhaps an understanding of “collections” in LR) to select the best of the best photos. Beyond that, it takes a little while to post-process the photos. It’s a bit faster if you know how to make presets and stuff, but this is still beyond the ken of casual photographers. Not everyone is a hardcore Lightroom geek, no matter what Adobe might think. It’s still a scary product to a lot of people who are just looking for a way to organize all the new photos they are taking!

The other reason casual users will like it is because the photos are automatically backed up on the cloud. That feels good because you don’t have to worry about syncing up your home library on Lightroom with the cloud. It’s confusing! Adobe still hasn’t given users an easy way to do this. People are very scared to lose their photos in a hard drive crash, and hardly anyone (especially casual users) have a good backup situation in place.

For pros that do serious post-processing and hardcore organizing, I think Lightroom is still a smart way to organize your pro photos at home… But, for all those “other” casual photos that pros take… (see the next section!)

Why it’s good for Pros:

Your first instinct might be, “Hey, I’m a pro. I use Lightroom and have a pretty good workflow. I don’t need Google’s server farms to make any decisions for me!” Well, I think you are right for your “Pro” photos that you do for clients or for your own master portfolio. But, pros also take a lot of “casual” photos. These include quick photos of your family, mobile shots from your phone, fun party shots, a casual dinner with friends, and this sort of thing. Not every photo a pro takes is a serious major undertaking.

Now, if you’re like me, then you take TWO kinds of photos. You take serious portfolio pieces and you take casual family and walking-around photos. And then you kind of have a workflow for EACH kind of photo. And for me, this has been a problem (well until this Google announcement). I have ended up with a pile of family photos that sometimes builds up over time in my Lightroom because I just haven’t had the time to go figure out the best ones and post-process. I feel bad about it — but it is a real problem!

So, in the future, I’ll still keep my pro workflow for my portfolio pieces with my usual Rambo workflow using several Adobe products (if you want to see my whole workflow, see the newly updated HDR Tutorial). But for my family and casual shots, I’m just gonna upload them to the Google Cloud and have it pick out the best ones AND post-process them. This will 1) save me a ton of time 2) unburden my mind from tasks-left-undone and 3) quickly deliver pictures to my whole family, thus increasing the circle of happiness that keeps everything zen.

Why it’s good for casual photographers:

I probably get more questions from casual photographers than pros about “How do I organize my photos?” It’s a big problem actually. The process of getting the photos off your devices, onto your computer, then selecting a few to share online is rather complex. Now I think the workflow is much simpler. There are still two situations:

1) Shooting with just a mobile phone (Android or iPhone): If you have Google+ activated and up and running, your photos can just go automatically to the cloud (private just to you by default). It will take your hundreds of photos, post-process them all, and then automatically choose the best ones and push them to the front of the album. It might make a few mistakes, but it’ll be pretty dang good. And if you don’t like the post-processing, you can undo it… But I have a feeling that people will really dig the automatic skin-softening. That is almost a universally adored feature!

2) Shooting with a compact camera or DSLR: The easiest path is just to download all the photos to a folder on your computer (put them in Lightroom, if you want) and then just upload the whole lot to Google+. Let Google figure out the best, or at least make a first pass at it. Give it a run a few times… It’s a drastic change to a workflow, yes, but I think this is a smart way to do it.

Why this is bad news for Adobe

I know some of you may disagree that “casual” photographers don’t use Lightroom, but I’ve talked to thousands of casual shooters that DO use Lightroom. It’s arguably the best way (hitherto) to organize your photos. All you need to do is take a few thousand photos a year, and you have yourself an organizational problem! There are millions of “casual” photographers that fit into this category. This is, in fact, Adobe’s biggest growth area — new photographers that are needing a way to organize and post-process their photos. They still continue to grow with pros, although you could make an argument here that that area is slowing because most pros already use Lightroom or Aperture! There’s just not a lot of room there.

But now, these casual shooters have a free way to organize and post-process their photos with this new Google server farm. Even better, the photos are backed up onto the cloud, which you don’t get with Lightroom. Google will be able to snipe away millions of users who would have previously chosen to go the Adobe route.

What I want to see next from Google:

I do like the post-processing already. I think it makes good decisions for the most part, but I’d like to have even more control on the web. I know they just bought Nik, so I can only assume that we’ll get some of those handy “Snapseed” controls soon, and then in the future, maybe some of the other cool effects from the whole Nik suite of tools. The other thing I’d like to see is the ability to upload RAW files. Once we can upload RAW files, then we’ll have even more power to post-process photos. Again, I don’t use the Google post-processing farm for my pro-portfolio pieces. I still do all that RAW processing locally.

It will be a long time before the web is fast enough for me to quickly upload a set of RAWs and process them all online. Pros will keep our hardcore processing local for quite a bit, I think. However, I am at peace with the idea that there are two kinds of photos in my life – those that need massive at-home client processing, and those that the web can organize and process for me.

Filed under the categories: Travel

Remote Vision, Ravens, and Glass

Here’s a snippet from the latest tutorial for you. This is the part we filmed when we were up close to the North Korean prison here in New Zealand. I talk a bit about expanded visual consciousness…

Daily Photo – Entering the Dungeons

Here’s the dungeon from under that French chateau that we visited several months ago.

I can’t imagine actually living in a house with a dungeon. I mean, it would be pretty dang awesome, but you would also feel like you’d have to put the place to good use. I guess I have a few enemies that I could capture and put down there, but that seems a bit extreme. Maybe just have parties and stuff. Or maybe a studio for processing down there. It’s hard to say… it all seems a bit dreary.

Maybe when I get some miner-bots, I’ll minecraft up a design under my existing house and send them on their way. I can carve something out down there. Well maybe I better do it beside the house so my bad designs don’t make the whole house collapse.

Filed under the categories: France, New Zealand, Paris, Queenstown, Travel

Huge PhotoWalk in San Francisco Tonight!

Hope to see you there! See the event info here! We’ll be giving away Google Glass, so good luck to all of you attending.

New part of the HDR Tutorial – mini-masking tutorial

If you have seen the new and improved HDR Tutorial, then you may see this new video below on page 3! This describes how to do masking, which is a very common question for people that are getting started in Photoshop.

Daily Photo – The Night of the Aurora

I think these happen a lot down here in New Zealand! I’m hardly an expert though… I’m very last-minute about all these things and only know about them once they start happening. Some people are real aurora experts and track them like storms. There are websites, apps, and all sorts of things. I gotta get my act together so I can plan for these events better.

I was having so much fun with the landscape orientation… but then I decided to go vertical for a few shots, and I am glad I did!

When I show people these photos without any explanation, they never ever ask me what that yellow-green light is in the lower part. I don’t know if they just assume it is the aurora, or maybe they think it is light from a city, or maybe they think I added it in post. I just don’t know… but I do like to see people’s reactions, especially when they are confused. I don’t know why I enjoy confusing people with these sorts of photos, but it is just kinda fun. I think it is fun because I am also confused by how this kind of light can even be possible!

Filed under the categories: New Zealand, Nikon D800, Queenstown, Travel

Did you get your monthly HardWare Magazine?

No? Well, me neither. I’m not sure who subscribes. I think it is an Asian magazine. Singapore? Anyway, they interviewed me, and they now have the (honor?) of having the article with the BIGGEST PHOTO OF ME EVER! haha it’s so crazy… I was shocked when someone sent me a PDF!

Actually, when I saw this giant spread, I thought that “Hardware Magazine” might be some kind of a Singaporean gay magazine.

Daily Photo – Robots in the Streets of Tokyo!

Someone gave me a hot tip to go see this cool robot area of Tokyo! There’s a place called the Robot Restaurant, and it’s one of the craziest places I have ever been!

It’s basically like Medieval Times, but with robots and girls in bikinis.

Outside the Robot Restaurant, they have all these awesome-looking robots with iPads on their chests. There are people inside, which is kind of a disappointment, but also kind of a relief. Either way, they are pretty awesome!

Filed under the categories: Japan, Nikon D800, Tokyo, Travel

My Friend Antonis Karalis

Recently appeared on Greek TV to talk about Google Glass and he mentioned me in a very nice way. Antonis composes a lot of the music I use in my videos, so be sure to look for his work on one of the sites below!

iTunes: http://goo.gl/LYY7j
Google Play: http://goo.gl/mtW23
Amazon MP3: http://goo.gl/SvsJq

Missed this behind the scenes video?

Last week I posted a behind-the-scenes of this shot. You can find that video right here on the blog!

Daily Photo – Ancient Mount Fuji Village

Here I am in that little village of Saiko. I don’t know if it is always relatively empty or just this one day, but hardly anyone was around. I did see this one older gentleman sauntering around, and he happened to saunter right into the frame! A lucky grab!

This “look” for this photo is a bit experimental, but I kind of like it. To achieve it (this is Photoshop-heavy-jargon I’m afraid!), you can duplicate the layer then do some extreme sharpening and a black and white conversion using something like Silver Efex Pro (there is a review here on the site). After that, you can change the blend mode to Hard Light… it makes an interesting effect!

Filed under the categories: Japan, Mount Fuji, Nikon D800, Travel

Newsletter Special

Those of you that sign up for the free Newsletter not only hear about specials, but you sometimes get to see videos early! Like this one below… Happy subscribers got to see it first!

Behind the Scenes in the New Zealand Forest (silly video warning)

I ran around in the forest in New Zealand with Curtis, Karen, and Scott. We decided to make a video after we got to a stopping point… Anyway, here’s something fun (and maybe a tad useful) for you

Daily Photo – Exploring the old Village

If you ever get to Mont Saint Michel, give the whole place a full circle on the curtain wall. It’s easy to get up on the wall (and quite safe to walk on… even though walking on a wall sounds dangerous). There are stairs to get up there and everything. Anyway, the wall circumnavigates about a third of the old village and monastery. There are countless good angles. It’s also worth walking this route at least three times – Sunrise (or sunset), mid day, and night!

Filed under the categories: France, Mont Saint Michel, Nikon D800, Travel, tutorial

Largest Photowalk in History?

Here’s an article on Petapixel about the upcoming event in San Francisco!

The official unveiling

I’ll be saying a few words at an unveiling of these new statues on Sunday, May 12, at The Hills here in Arrowtown. A few of you may be there! Sir Richard Taylor from Weta Workshop and Sir Michael Hill will be there for the official unveling of its newest work, ‘The Frolic and the Fancy’ by Max Patte. See more about Max here. Max liked this photo I took one day while I was out golfing, so it will be fun to be there for the official event!

Daily Photo – The Frolic and the Fancy by Max Patte

Here’s the first photo I took of these transcendant statues.

I’m surprised at people’s reaction to this photo online. So many people thought they were real! I suppose I did too the first time I saw them.

There is one other very unusual thing. I don’t know what they are made of, even though I was right beside them. Obviously, I know next to nothing about sculpture, but I have some basic knowledge of materials (I think!). Anyway, I absolutely am not sure how they are made… I’ll ask Max and report back to you!

Filed under the categories: Arrowtown, New Zealand, Queenstown, Travel

The Sony NEX Experiment in China

I’m going to spend a few weeks in China using only my Sony NEX (see Sony NEX-7 Review) I’m sidelining the Nikon D800 (see Nikon D800 Review) for the time being. It will be my backup camera in case the Sony breaks down. This is a role-reversal for my cameras! For the last year+, the Sony has been the backup quarterback, but now the coach has made a big decision.

DSLRs are a dying breed

Over a year ago, I wrote a controversial article called DSLRs are a Dying Breed. I got a lot of hate for that… but that’s cool.

Important Questions to Ask Me

Whenever you see someone come out and say something sensational like this, you should ask:

Question #1: Is Sony paying you to say this or make this move?
Answer #1: No.

Question #2: Did you get your Sony NEX-7 for free or discount?
Answer #2: No. I paid full price

Question #3: Does Sony pay you to advertise?
Answer #3: No. These Japanese companies don’t seem to care much about social media… I’m sure if I showed them the Google Analytics on this blog and that I have over 10 million followers when you add up Google+, FB, Pinterest, and Twitter that they would just give me a blank-Japanese-stare. They still care more about advertising in old photography magazines that hardly anybody reads any more. I have another article you might enjoy called “Stop Advertising in Magazines” where I did an experiment.

Anyway, if any of the answers were “Yes,” it would not necessarily make what I am saying invalid, but it should make you more suspicious. If you see other photographers in the media make a surprising change, you should ask these questions too.

Maybe if you’ve followed me on StuckInCustoms.com for the past 6+ years, you know I’m honest about what I use and say. Nikon doesn’t pay more or have any financial relationship whatsoever, and I’ve always pimped their wares. I’ve always paid full price for all my Nikon equipment. NOW, having said that, maybe things will change in the future… but they could never pay me enough to make me say something I don’t believe already. Life’s too short, you know?

Why am I able to be so honest, independent of sponsorships (and/or the sad lack thereof)? Well, the blog is very profitable and keeps our team of about ten people happily paid and rewarded. It makes money because many nice people like you visit our store and get goodies you just can’t live without! hehe… but, seriously, I don’t have to scrounge around for business and sponsorship deals so that we can make payroll. I’m very grateful for this… it keeps the website and me independent, and I’m also very glad we have so many happy customers that keep the whole circle of love going. Thank you!

Why are you switching to the Sony NEX?

For over a year, my Nikon D800 has been my Main Camera and the Sony NEX-7 has been the backup. They are now swapping places!

I’m just experimenting with this swap two weeks while in China. However, this is a pretty major decision because I don’t go to China too often. If I come back and miss shots because of a bad camera decision, then it’s all my fault. I don’t want to have any photography-regrets! I have enough other regrets in my life… I don’t need to add photography regrets to the list!

Something that honestly drove this decision is that I’m without my 14-24mm Nikon lens. But I’ve been without it now for 6 weeks, and another 4 weeks in the past year because of a fault with the lens that Nikon could never really fix correctly. During that 10+ weeks, I’ve been using the Sony NEX-7 a lot, and I think it can pretty much do everything I need.

Update: Nikon just offered to send me a free loaner 14-24mm lens, but I declined. It’s problematic to ship it to me since I’m on the move, and I’m happy to go forward with my Sony experiment. Also, I’ve been without the 14-24mm for so long, I’ve gotten quite used to a Nikon-less way of life. It’s not so bad.

I’ll include a bunch of photos from NEX-7 so you can see the quality and judge for yourself.

Okay, but, still, what are the main reasons I have made this decision? Here they are:

• The new 10-18mm lens on the Sony NEX-7 is amazing. It’s a cropped sensor at 1.5x, so I’m really getting 15-27mm, which is not that different than the 14-24mm that I am used to. I love landscapes, so just backing up a few more feet is quite easy most of the time.
• The camera is SHARP. Oh god… that mirrorless sensor system is just so sharp… never blurry.
• It has all the basic lenses I need (which are not many – a wide angle and a telephoto)
• 24 megapixel — more than enough. Sure, the D800 has 36 megapixel, but, that doesn’t translate into many more horizontal pixels… Since I’ve been shooting with the D800, I haven’t been printing any bigger or doing any different licensing deals because of the higher resolution.
• Smaller. The NEX-7 is 5.9x smaller! Let’s just say SIX TIMES SMALLER for the sake of argument. Six Times. 6X. 111x49x38mm for the NEX-7 vs 146x123x82mm for the D800. It takes up hardly any space AND is…
• Lighter – 2.9x lighter (350g vs 1,000g) – I like measuring things in grams… I feel like a drug dealer.
• Faster at shooting 10 fps vs. 4 fps
• Screen that flips around – That is more useful than I ever knew…
• I have a Leica lens adapter on my NEX-7 that lets me use amazing Leica lenses, like this sweet f/1.2 that sometimes makes a surprise appearance !

Sample Sony NEX-7 Photos

While my Nikon has been in various states of disrepair (my fault, I assure you) I have been left with my Sony NEX-7. Here are some photos that I took. I’m very happy with them! Note that most of these are with the kit lens! Also note that I post-process a lot of my photos unapologetically.

Why the Sony NEX-7 and not another mirrorless system?

The micro-four-thirds are another very good system. There are also a lot more lenses available for that system rather than Sony’s new E-Mount system. But, I just really like the NEX-7 better than any of the micro-four-thirds cameras right now. Note all of that could change relatively quickly. But, really, the micro-four-thirds cameras are just fine and really cool. There are a lot more manufacturers making cameras and lenses for that system, and I know it has a huge following.

How will you determine if the “China Experiment” is a success or failure?

Well that is a good question. I wish I had not asked it. I’m quite scientific and analytical, you know? So I don’t know how I will know if this was truly a good move.

If I could do some sort of quantum experiment, where a parallel-universe-Trey made the opposite decision to use the Nikon D800 instead and happened to visit all the same places — and then I could quantum-combine the results and compare the photos from A and B — well that would be a good experiment, but I won’t do that. Well, I would, but I can’t think of a way to bring together multiple universes at the moment.

Another way would be if I took both cameras for two weeks and took the same photos of the same things. But that is overkill. I’m pretty Type-A go-getter, but I’m still kinda lazy. I’m not gonna do all that mess.

Here’s the thing, I’ll come back from two weeks in China with a ton of photos from the NEX-7, and either I’ll be happy with them or I won’t. If I come away with a lot of winners, then I’ll consider the whole thing a nice success! If I’m happy, then it will be a successful experiment. It’s quite a holistic analysis, and I am at zen peace with this.

Want to watch the live results roll in?

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to see my videos that I’ll post while using this camera in China. BTW, thanks for the 2.4 million views on the channel! I’ll upload videos there. Even though China blocks a lot of Google and YouTube, I have a VPN so I’m gonna be sweet-sliding around the Great Firewall of China.

Update: Sony has contacted me now. They asked if they could loan me anything to try, so I asked for the lesser cousin to the NEX-7 — the NEX 5n. I’m interested in trying the new OLED display attachment. It’s also a good deal cheaper than the NEX-7, and I’ve gotten many questions about it… I’ll play around with it and then I can answer.

Filed under the categories: Travel

Recent Interview with Kate Russell

You may remember Kate from the BBC; many years ago when she did a story about this site. She helped to make the site very popular in the UK — so we all have her to thank for that!

Kate has launched a new book called Working The Cloud, where she just posted a recent interview with me. There is a lot about business and this sort of thing, not so much about the photography. But maybe you’ll still enjoy it if you want to hear about those sorts of matters. Here is a little snippet from it:

Pinterest is another huge success for you, but is there any reason for non-visual businesses to engage with it?

TREY: Pinterest is awesome. I think I have about five million followers there and it is 90% women. Women connect the world and make it work! I know this because I was raised by my mom and sister… so I am sensitive to these things, you see. Anyway, even if, as you say, someone has a “non-visual business”, then they should still use Pinterest to build a brand around people and passions associated with the product or service. Let’s say for example, err… maybe a non-visual-business is something like… errr… let me see here, thinking out loud… well it’s hard to think of one… okay how about an accounting firm. I can’t think of anything more boring or non-visual than that. You could post photos of things that people in the accounting firm are passionate about… and you can build a personal connection that way. Let’s say that Steve, who is an expert in Irish Intellectual Property Tax Law is really into collecting steampunk stuff. Well he could pin a lot of steampunk gizmos. And Sally, who is a real killer when it comes to Inheritance Law in the Isle of Man is into candle-making. She can pin a lot of pretty candles and nonsense like that into the firm’s Pinterest with her own little personal note. That will give the accounting firm more of a human face and a bit more personality.

Daily Photo – The Pink Sea Spray at Sunset

Behind this exploding wave at Big Sur is something that I have never seen before. Why didn’t I take a photo of it? It’s because taking a good photo of a pod of whales from the beach is almost impossible! At least, it appears to be impossible for me. I’ve never seen whales so close into the beach. Maybe it happens all the time around there, but I was quite surprised. Have you ever seen a pod of whales from the beach?

Filed under the categories: Big Sur, California, Nikon D800, Travel

Watch online for the Google Science Fair, Live from Wakatipu High School in Queenstown

Well, “today” is confusing in New Zealand. It’s May 8 in NZ and May 7 in the US + Europe, and, well, + everywhere.

First is the Google Science Fair, which you can see below.

Second is with NZIPP this evening. Check this post to find the local time.

The Google Science Fair – Live Today

Here is the embedded video from Wakatipu High School in Queenstown. This was a really fun event for the Google Science Fair!

Daily Photo – Queenstown from the Air

I’m happy to be back home in Queenstown!

It’s strange to me to come “home” to the kind of place I used to go on vacation. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it. There is a very nice feeling when the airplane approaches this place. If you ever have a chance to fly in here, then you will know what I mean.

Airplane pilots have to go through some kind of special training or planning before an approach here. They have to spiral down and get between the mountains. I don’t know much about it, obviously. But I do know there is a very nice pilot on Air New Zealand that is a frequent reader of the blog! He came up and said hello to me when I was on his plane one day. Hi Captain!

Filed under the categories: New Zealand, Nikon D800, Queenstown, Travel