We have a very fun upcoming show (Monday, 7 PM PT, 10 PM ET) where we talk to a bunch of different authors on Flatbooks.com. I’ve asked them all to come prepared with a bunch of different tips and tricks from their respective eBooks, so it should be quite educational! 🙂
Daily Photo – Umbrella in the Sun
Tokyo has so many neighborhoods! There are dozens and dozens, each one like its own mini-city with its own culture and memes. This one (I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the name) is filled with an older, traditional feel. It’s not uncommon to see women come out and walk the street in traditional dress.
Want to join the community and share your photos? Here’s some links for you! 🙂 Google+ turned 2 years old, and they announced a new Badge Maker that you can use for your website. I thought I’d use the new badges below to re-invite you to a few of the communities we started there! These are good places for you to share your work, if you so desire. Also, as always, I am happy for you to share your work here in the comments on the blog too! 🙂
Daily Photo – Peaceful Evening in Wanaka
I had a peaceful evening in Wanaka.
There is this tree that sits out in the middle of the lake. It’s so unusual. I love the way it reflects back on itself in the smooth water. I was by myself, listening to music on my iPod, and just watching the water as it would calm down then get excited, then calm down again. I swapped out lenses a few times and kept moving around to admire it from different angles. This one was one of my favorites.
I asked my Optometrist, Danielle Pretty, of Eyes on Ardmore ( http://eyesonardmore.co.nz/ ) in Wanaka, New Zealand, about Google Glass when I went in for a checkup. She was very excited about them – so I flipped on my android phone to make a quick video because I thought you would find her observations interesting. That strange jello-effect in the video is bc of the YouTube stabilization… I couldn’t decide if you wanted to see a shaky video or one with funky-jello. Maybe it will look cooler if you do some shrooms while watching it…
I was glad she was so excited about it… I was kind of thinking that optometrists might be a little skittish about the whole thing. Obviously, she does not represent all optometrists, but her opinion seems pretty valid and measured to me. This “Above the Horizon” thing we talk about is something that you won’t really understand until you wear them for a while. This means a lot for driving and stuff. I think people are afraid they get in the way of driving, but they don’t. I even find that maps, for example, are less distracting than looking over at your center console (or worse, what I fear most people do, looking down at your mobile phone). In fact, after a while you just stop looking at the screen as you get used to the map data hitting your retina. It’s a strange effect, but quite awesome!
New Stuck On Earth for the Mac – Wanna Test?
Wow – look at that… over 2500 pixels across or however much your Mac monitors can muster! This is the ultimate way to use the app… we’re looking for a few good testers before it is released. Hit it hard and give us your feedback!
And yes, it is already available for free on the Android and the iPad – check StuckOnEarthApp.com! 🙂
Daily Photo – Dark Street with Lanterns in China
Here’s another night scene from China a few weeks ago. I’m always a sucker for these Chinese lanterns. They just always seem so authentic, even though I am sure that most of the time they are just strange anachronisms and no longer the most efficient way to light up the area. But, as far as anachronisms go, it’s one of my favorites!
Hehe – funny conversation with a nice woman in Toronto. She saw I was wearing Glass and I told her I was recording, and then a funny conversation began!
Where do you think she is from?
Daily Photo – Swimming On Top of Beijing
I spent the morning and the night up on top of this building shooting downtown. I didn’t even realize this awesome room was here until I came down to the bathroom! So I decided to have some fun moving around and taking photos!
And yes, if you look close, you can probably see it is not really a swimming pool. The floor was super-buttery and soft. I don’t know what this room was used for. As far as I could tell, it was always empty. There were no tables or stage or anything at all… maybe the only reason it ever existed was for me to come in and take a photo of it!
Here’s a little video from China when I was changing lenses to get a shot on an old part of the Great Wall.
Another Photo during Winterfest
Every year around this time Queenstown has a long event called Winterfest. Every day they have different events… on the opening night, there is a big concert and then some fireworks. Here’s a quick shot I got while I was watching it with the family.
Daily Photo – Super Moon Sets Over Queenstown
So… you’ve been coming to the blog for, what, six+ years, yes? Well, maybe…hehe… AND, if you’ve been coming all that time, you might have noticed that I have NEVER posted a photo of the moon. Why is that, you wonder? The main reason is because I’ve always gotten absolutely terrible moon photos. Until now! I finally got one that I am kinda happy with… I shot this in the morning yesterday when I walked out to my studio.
I saw it setting behind the mountain near my house, so I got out my NEX-7 with the 55-210mm lens and shot away. This is just one exposure… one RAW file. It worked out well because all the light levels were about the same with the pink in the sky and the snow and the white moon behind the purple cloud…
I know my stance on this is not popular, but I don’t really care. The photography-media is out there trying to scare you into protecting your work with watermarks… I urge you not to live your online life and make your online decisions based on fear. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering. A little green friend once told me that.
As you may know, my work is all Creative Commons Non-Commercial. That means people, as long as they give credit and link back to StuckInCustoms.com , can use my images on their blogs, wallpaper, personal use – anything – as long as it is not used commercially. Every day, I upload a HUGE 6000+ pixel max-resolution image to the Internet. I do not have any fear at all… Believe me, it’s quite liberating living in a world without internet-stealth-fear.
This does not prevent licensing of the images. We do a ton of this activity when people contact us through the website.
So why don’t I use watermarks? It’s a multi-part philosophy:
Updated List o’ Reasons
1) Watermarks look ugly. Whenever I look at a photo with a watermark, often times, ALL I can think about is that watermark! It’s so distracting. Also, I find that I begin to psycho-analyze the photographer based on their font choice. I can tell immediately if they are a cheesy wedding photographer or someone that has no sense of graphic design couth. Now, maybe this is just me. But I don’t want to spend any time thinking about the watermark. I just want to look at the image. And, conversely, I think this is what people want when they look at my images.
2) Legitimate companies do not steal images to use commercially. So I don’t have any logical fear there. *In case of emergency, break glass and see #4
3) There are other services, like Google Reverse Image Search that can help me easily find bottom-feeders that DO re-post your images.
4) We do register our images with the copyright office, so if someone uses an image commercially without a proper license, it is an easy lawsuit. Easy. We’ve had many many wins (often which happen even before you go to court), but we can’t talk about them because it’s always in the paperwork. But there are many online articles you can find out about our lawsuits… everyone from Time magazine to the Sydney Newspapers.
5) I don’t have to maintain two versions of each image – one with a watermark and one without.
6) NOT using watermarks and using creative commons helps more and more people to use your image freely for fun, which increases traffic and builds something I call “internet-trust.” If more people link to your images, then you get more Google juice that flows down your river.
7) As image search and image recognition get better and better, there will be no need to watermark things. In a very short time, we’ll be able to use online tools to find the original creator of an image.
8) Yes, last, there will be bottom-feeders that steal your stuff. I call this the cost of doing business on the internet. These are the Tic-Tacs that are stolen from the 7-11. It is impossible to maintain 100% of your digital inventory, so wanting “perfection” in your online strategy is an illusion.
Hangout about Watermarks
This article ended up inspiring this hangout. We even got an attorney on to talk about orphan works and whatnot. If you want to watch it with the Questions Interface (so you can scrub back and forth and find the part you want) See This Version of the Hangout.
Daily Photo – San Francisco and the Sony NEX-7
Yes, yes. I’m working on this switch to the NEX-7 story in the background… it’s taking a while! I took this photo below of San Francisco just recently with the NEX-7, btw. Also, we were contacted by Sony after my first article came out a few weeks ago. Sony offered me free cameras and lenses – unlimited! That was nice of them, but I told them no. In fact, I just bought another one as a backup (an NEX-6)… paid full price and everything. So… yes… the article is on the way… just been busy lately! 🙂
Watch the live show tonight here on the blog. It starts at 7 PM PT, 10 PM ET! We’ll talk all about this…
More photos and another story of the event
If this is an interesting topic for you, check my other article “Release the Google Internet Balloons!” The new article below is something that was written specifically for the Google Glass Explorers.
If you have Glass and have access to the private Google Explorers area, you can see this article and more there.
I noticed a shortcoming in Google Glass. When you are in a helicopter and trying to get Google Map directions, the only options are walking, biking, public transport, or car. There is nothing about a chopper in there.
But I wasn’t flying the thing. I had the back window seat and was busy tracking the Google[x] Project Loon balloons. I didn’t really plan on making a video until I jumped in the chopper. Then, I thought, hey, “This is gonna be cool. I should record it!” I’m still getting my head around the idea of recording the “highlights” of my day. I’m doing it more and more with my kids. I don’t want to lose these moments, you know?
If you click below, you can see the video I made with Glass. Is it blocked in your country? Here is the Vimeo link.
I didn’t know anything about Project Loon when I signed the paperwork from Google. They just said “Sign it.” I was like… errrr… okay. But if it was from Google[x], I figured it had to be cool. Besides, I trust Google and I guess they know I am a good secret-keeper. It sounded like a great chance to go see Project Loon and take pictures behind the scenes.
Let me back up a second. So, it turns out that Google has this cool secret plan to launch a matrix of balloons all around the earth to bring internet to the masses. There are billions of people on Earth without internet. It turns out that launching a ton of low-cost balloons could be the most effective way of getting these people connected.
And, by coinkidink, they happened to be testing these balloon systems in New Zealand, where I just moved about a year ago with my family! I live down in Queenstown, which is about three hours south of the launch site in Tekapo. I drove up there with my son and arrived at midnight. A few hours later, at the crack of dawn, I was watching a launch and flying all over the south island to get photos and test out the balloons. We had a whole covey of helicopters out there. It was like Apocalypse Google Now.
The balloon launch worked flawlessly. I’m sure they’ve had many failures (in the wonderful Google-iterative-development-manner), but the one I saw was perfect. They partnered with another company called Raven Aerostar to help with the balloons. These guys build the NASA weather balloons, the Macy’s Day Parade balloons, and all kinds of other hardcore things. I was kind of hoping the balloons would be in the shape of Snoopy and Barney, but no such luck.
As for Glass, I would alternate between taking photos and videos. It’s super easy. By default, the Glass video (which is all HD), only records 10 seconds. But you can click a little button on top if what you are recording is interesting and it can go for a long time. This is actually a smart system. Most 10-second videos are quite boring and you can bail out easily. It sure makes it easier later when editing. I edited together everything in iMovie in about five minutes. That was easy and fun.
But then I realized another little problem. I mean, it’s a good problem, but still a problem. I’m recording more and more video every day, especially of my family. Editing it down and picking the best bits takes a bit of time. Creating a “highlight” reel of your day or week is a cool idea, so I am looking forward to when it is more automated. Google+ photos are already doing a smart job of this with “Highlights” where it automatically picks the best photos. I’m looking forward to when that happens with video too. Anyhoo, for now, it just takes a few minutes in iMovie to edit stuff down… not the end of the world.
Back to the Loon story. We landed on a very remote farm in Canturbury, which is sort of a central area of the South Island of New Zealand. Even here, there are about a million people without internet. After landing, we went into the house and tested out the internet as the balloons were flying overhead, forming an internet mesh. It worked perfectly! The family was thrilled. Well, the wife was not so thrilled when her husband started looking on trademe.co.nz (the New Zealand ebay) at buying another truck.
It was a fun experience, and the Google team on Loon is really clever. They’ve been working hard on this, and there is a lot of hard and fun work left to do. I felt kind of like the-guy-that-didn’t-belong. I was just kind of darting in and out, staying out of the way, taking photos, and drinking it all in. But man, it was cool. I was really honored.
One of my best photos I took from the helicopter no one has even seen yet! I was there with the famous Steven Levy from Wired Magazine. They got an exclusive on my very very very favorite photo, and that will appear in the magazine on newstands soon. Steven’s full article on Project Loon will also be another must-read, so be sure to check that out.
No text… here’s one you gotta see… I grabbed a video of it to share with you, otherwise you never would have believed me! 🙂
Daily Photo – In the Lama Temple
While touring one of the many temples in Beijing a few weeks ago, we went through one of them that was filled with Lamas that were busy studying. Well, most were busy studying. Others would take an occasional break, like this one who was taking a little cat nap.
A few people saw this a few months ago when they came out to the workshop, but I thought you might like to see it in the snow… it’s a cool winter down here in Queenstown… anyway, I thought you might enjoy seeing where I go to work on my photos every day! 🙂 I shot this with Google Glass.
Daily Photo – Path Through the Snow
Just today, on the way home after the Winter Festival in downtown Queenstown, I saw this scene just off the road. I jumped out of the car and got in a good spot to take a photo. There is no tripod or anything… just a handheld shot with the Sony NEX-7. I processed it in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro. Actually, I also made a video of me processing it… the team is actually working on something cool on the backend too… a new way to bring you these videos! 🙂
On This Week in Tech talking about Google X Loon Balloons, Sony NEX-7, etc
I joined from Christchurch a few days ago to talk with Leo and the gang about what happened behind the scenes at the Google launch of Project Loon in New Zealand. Here’s the full article on StuckInCustoms.com about the Google Internet Balloon launch.
Daily Photo – Wild Tokyo Streets
Here’s the wild Tokyo streets not far from Roppongi. It turns out this tiny little spot is safe to stand in. I think. Well, it probably wasn’t, but those little lines gave me some sense of safety. Either way, I took all the shots and got out of here quickly!
You can see Don Quixote there on the left. It’s a very popular store in Tokyo and they have everything! They have t-shirts, shaving cream, kid toys, and adult toys. Those last two categories are quite different.
