I used one of Trey’s Lightroom Presets on the photo below. Thanks again for all the good feedback on those – I am glad everyone is enjoying them!
Daily Photo – An Old Dock in the Lake
A bit further down the road to Glenorchy is an old dock that has fallen into the lake over the years. You can pull off the road just about anywhere and take a very short little walk to see a bunch of things you can’t see otherwise. I sometimes force myself to pull over and just go for little jaunt off in one direction or another. I’m pretty good at visualizing what it might be like from the road, but there’s often hidden information back there…
This how-to video is taking a very long time… I’ll get it done, but it will take a while longer…
If you click through to the YouTube page, you’ll see a list of all the tools I used… and that will give you some info in the meantime.
A few of the shots in the video are from this area around Glenorchy below.
Daily Photo – Rounding the Bend to Glenorchy
Each time I go around the bend from Queenstown to Glenorchy, I see something spectacular. I know there are a few people that live in Glenorchy and work in Queenstown, so that means they get to make this drive every day. I wonder if any of them like to take photos… if so, the commute must take an extra thirty minutes!
I still use this camera quite a bit and I’m adding new photos to my Sony NEX-7 Review. So if you haven’t popped over there in a while, you might see some new things!
Daily Photo – A Simple Wave
I don’t know what to think of this photo. I took it with the NEX-7 and did not process it at all. I find it a little bit interesting, but I am not sure why. I’ve stared at it for longer than I care to admit, trying to figure it out.
This comes from the full 4-video Art of Photography series that we recently launched for Beginner to Intermediate photographers. The live launch was a huge success (thanks everyone for the GREAT comments on that page!) and we have just released this first video for free. Sadly (but awesomely) you can go purchase the other 3 episodes if you find the first one to be helpful. I believe you will!
Many Days of New Zealand
I miss my new home in Queenstown, so I’m going to be posting a series of photos from NZ over the next few days. I hope that is okay. Normally I jump around and post places out of order, but I’ll make a departure from that for four or five days. Thanks for indulging me!
Daily Photo – A Moving Sunset
When the sun started going down in Milford Sound, I figured I was going to start using up a lot of memory cards. I’m still using those RAW Steel cards that are 16GB each. The D800 has been filling up my cards pretty quickly, so I’ve been thinking about upgrading to 32GB. But I already have a load of 16GB and swapping isn’t that much of a pain… maybe I should just wait until I need the 64GB some day… if ever.
I’ve got a great pair of hiking shoes, but my pants are not so great. I’m looking for a certain pair, but I just don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. This is one of the reasons I am generally dissatisfied with my hiking pants selection and shopping. Any suggestions are welcome! They have to be warm, super comfy, not “wander downwards” when I squat for low photos, and not be tooooo dorky. That’s not too much to ask, is it? 🙂
Daily Photo – Hiking Around Milford
I went around a bend in Milford and was greeted with these strange lost-world type trees. You can see the famous Mitre Peak there on the right. There is a wide array of lush vegetation around here because of the constant moisture. There’s even a surplus of moisture here because of a huge waterfall that is right behind me, coating everything in a fine mist all day long.
If you’re in the Petaluma area on Sunday, stop by and say hi! I’ll be on This Week in Tech with Leo at the TWIT studios. The show starts at 3 PM PT… hope to see you there!
Here’s a video from one of the previous times I was at the TWIT studios.
The Aurora
My NZ friends all assumed that I must have seen many auroras in the northern hemisphere, but I never have. I went out several times in Iceland and other places in the far north in the winter and never saw a thing. So I was very thrilled to have it happen just a few weeks after I arrived in NZ!
Daily Photo – The Comet in Queenstown
On the night of the Aurora Australis, I was about to pack up and head back to the car when I saw this amazing aurora right over the top of my head. It made this long triangle across the ceiling of the sky, so I had to do that thing where I get my camera in that strange position on the tripod of pointing up. There is always a tough yoga move you gotta perfect to get the camera situated at the right angle. Also, frankly, there’s a little bit of guesswork that comes into play too!
I end up ordering a lot of prints for my home. I usually do it through SmugMug (see my SmugMug review). I get quite bored of looking at the same thing over and over again, and it’s not really that expensive to get new prints made. I think we don’t think about doing it too much because it’s supposed to be this expensive thing, but it’s really not! The problem does become storage… but it’s good to have extra prints just to give away to friends (I never charge friends for prints).
Daily Photo – Stilts in Monterey
We’ve had two great PhotoWalks in Monterey. Here’s one of the photos I took during the event. I can’t remember if it was the first or second one now! They are kind of merging together in my mind…
Anyway, I thought it looked nice how these colorful places were up on stilts above the water, so I set up in portrait mode to see if I liked what I saw…
I have written a new eBook called The Beauty of Ambiguity! This extended, new piece will help you to better understand your own concepts of beauty and how it can be explored through your photography.
I also decided to make it an anthology of sorts, so I included updated versions of the most popular how-to stories like “9 Tips for your HDR Brain to Consider” to “HDR: It’s About the Light,” and I also revisited and expanded some of my popular long-form pieces, like the Chernobyl story.
Enjoy! We’ve been busy publishing new books over there, so be sure to check out the many other Flatbooks authors while there!
Answers to the Trivia
I have the answers here in the variety hour! Jump ahead to 30:30 where I describe the photos and the cameras with which they were shot.
The Camera Doesn’t Matter
I’ll go ahead and state my premise here from the outset.
I believe this is the best time ever for you to get into photography, and I expect my little trivia contest below will prove that a camera that is only a few hundred dollars (like the Olympus Tough) can take photos as interesting as one for a few thousand dollars (like the Nikon D3S) or even one that is tens of thousands of dollars (like the Phase One). There are so many cameras out there, but I try to boil it down to the good/better/best on the Camera Reviews page here on the site.
Hardcore gear-head photographers will get VERY ANGRY at the statement above, but I’d like to see how they do on the trivia test below!
I used many different cameras at Burning Man – everything from one that cost a few hundred dollars to something that costs tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes, I didn’t feel like carrying around a giant medium format camera or a DSLR, and I just wanted to be handy and quick with a little handheld consumer camera like the Olympus or the Pentax.
The Methodology
For all the photos below, I stripped out all the metadata (I think) and made them all the same resolution (4000 pixels wide or high with various crops) so that would not give away any clues as to the camera that made them.
Also note that I have processed all these photos. Look, I can’t help it… This isn’t a pure lab situation… but life is not a pure lab situation. In some cases, I’ve even used Lightroom to add grain back into the photo. That will make your job even more difficult. I didn’t make Lightroom adjustments to make the trivia harder – I just did this style of post-processing on each photo because I thought it was kind of beautiful. And see that one I put in there with the spiral of fire? I DID put that one there just to mess with you a bit.
Anyway, I’ve never made any apologies about my love of hardcore post-processing. I think the photo itself is just the beginning, and then the real magic happens when I can bend the light to my will later.
In that sense, I really quite like this trivia contest. Since I’m not alone in my love of post-processing, it makes an even stronger case that the camera with which you initially capture the light is a smaller and smaller part of the equation. The bigger part of the equation is you, yourself – your personality, your tools, and how you choose to use them on any given day.
Trey’s Lightroom Presets
All of the photos below were simply edited in Lightroom. I used the newly released Trey’s Lightroom Presets in case you want to play with them yourself. I thought I’d get that little plug in there… hope you don’t mind. 🙂
And here are the 6 final photos with the six different cameras. I put little captions under each one to give you a bit of context for the story…
While riding by on my bike, I saw these three dancers-al-fresco enjoying the sun. It seemed to be the sort of thing that was interesting and just begging for a photograph, and, well, you can see what happened. And no, none of this was posed… it just happened.
In the middle of the pink party, this girl was at center camp with pink ears and her dust cover. She was a very pretty bunny, so I gave her the international eyebrow-sign of “is it okay to take a photo?” and she lit up happily.
On the night the man burned, 60,000 people crowded around the bonfire of mammoth proportions. Photographers did anything they could to see over the crowd, including this enterprising photographer-wizard.
A girl rides in front of the most wonderful truck I’ve ever seen. Do you know the history behind it?
On the night of the temple burn, millions of burning embers filled the sky like golden dust from the heavens. I aimed my camera up and twisted it with the beat of nearby music.
There are over a hundred art-cars that roam the desert during the day and night. You can get on any one at any time and it will pick you up at a random place and drop you off at another. This little gypsy car was one of my favorites, and the music that flowed out of it was eclectic and relaxing.
Sample Answer (probably not right)
Photo 1 – B
Photo 2 – F
Photo 3 – D
Photo 4 – A
Photo 5 – C
Photo 6 – E
(And you can add some of your thoughts below your answer too if you would like to ruminate on one thing versus another!)
The Answer
I’ll give the final answer in one week after the initial posting…
These out-of-the-way places are some of the best for photography because the locals actually like photographers from the west. About 98% of the time they find us interesting and worthy of a smile. They seem to like the attention we give them with our cameras and there are many smiles to be had.
I don’t take a lot of photos of people smiling, because I like to take photos before people notice or right as soon as they notice. Usually though, everyone smiles after I take a few… I do a few facial maneuvers so that they feel more comfy.
No, we’re not changing the name to “The No-Variety Hour.” Trey’s Variety Hour is not running tonight due to the Labor Day holiday. Be sure to keep an eye on my YouTube Channel for next week’s show!
Best Caves in the world
What are some of your favorite caves in the world? I’ve only been to a few…. but I’m dying to get into that giant salt crystal cave… it’s shut off to the public, but I’d love the opportunity to go take photos inside.
Daily Photo – The Underwater Cave of Mystery
This is a very cool place!
There are a thousand boulders that are stacked up all over The Baths area of Virgin Gorda. The beaches are actually separated where the boulders get really intense. This is one of those areas, and to get here, you have to duck and shimmy and slide around. Once you are here, however, you can wade deep into this cave and into other underwater caves beyond.
