Here is part 1 of something I did with Fox News. I know many of you saw it live, but in case you missed, click play below! 🙂
No More Space Shuttle
It’s kind of a bummer, eh? I wish NASA had something exciting on the heels of the space shuttle to get everyone excited. Surely they have designed some awesome new ships… let’s see them and get ’em up there! 🙂
Daily Photo – The Shuttle Machine
I went out to the launchpad during the “retraction event” which is quite exciting. Well, it’s kind of exciting because it’s all in slow motion. The unit retracts very very slowly – so slowly you barely even notice it. The whole thing takes over an hour, but it’s still pretty cool.
About halfway through, I got the feeling that the shuttle was intertwined into this huge, hulking machine, and that is when I grabbed this shot.
This city was different than any other than I visited in France. It had an amazing public electric train system that had the awesome feature of running across grass. It was very cool to look down and see yourself floating across grass…
Daily Photo – Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Montpellier
We passed this amazing cathedral a few times while walking around Montpellier. It looked great from almost any angle, and I really liked the lines and shapes. That was part of the reason I decided to go with this treatment.
If you want some cool filters for Video, I recommend Magic Bullet Looks! I updated my Magic Bullet Looks review after I used it to make this video below. By the way, thanks for telling your friends and everyone about it… I just released it and it already got over 150,000 views, so thanks!
A great app if you have Apple TV
This is sort of a niche recommendation. But if you have Apple TV and you have an iPad and want to play movies from your computer, try an app called “Air Video”. I use it all the time to play video files and then share them from the iPad up onto the Apple TV.
Daily Photo – Walking Farther Along the Ancient Great Wall
Some of the places I visited on this ancient, original stretch of the Great Wall were almost too covered in vegetation to navigate. Thick conifers and strange plants would block this way and that. I listened to music and that made everything even more surreal.
I had always heard that the top of the Great Wall was so wide that five horses could ride side by side (16 feet across). When you are up there, it seems even wider with all the trees and plants, and you almost forget you are on top of the wall itself.
I think these things are always a bit strange… but my mom really liked these photos from this red carpet event that was hosted by Samsung recently. This one came about through my agent at CAA, but next time I’ll have to tell her not to put me back-to-back walking down with a gay guy because they always outdress everyone else… He’s not in the photo below (lots of ppl there) — but his name was David Bromstad (a designer you may know from HGTV). He’s a super-nice guy and we shared a little dressing room. I knew immediately that he would out-dress everyone!
(Note: those little shopping cart icons below were part of the screenshots that I grabbed from the news agency website)
BBC: The Story of India
Has anyone seen this? It’s pretty good…. watching it now. Besides being full of good content, there is also nice cinematography.
Daily Photo – The Walt Disney Concert Hall
I had a late night taking photos in downtown LA. I parked over near the Walt Disney Concert Hall and this was my final photo of the night as I was walking back to my car.
It was one of those situations where I didn’t feel like unfurling my camera again. You know when you’re really tired and you’re just ready to mail it in? That was me… but I saw this strange green light… and it looked a little like the green reflection off the hall… and then after that, I knew I had to go ahead and take a photo. I was happy to at that point.
During those live events a few weeks ago, I was actively reading all the comments and questions in the middle of the event. I was working on this photo and I said this guy was kind of “emo”. Someone in the comments said something like, “Since when did goth become emo?” Hehe… and yes, he was right… goth was the word I should have used, so apologize if I have upset BOTH the goths and the emos….
Daily Photo – Goth in Tokyo
While leaving Harajuku, I saw this guy walking towards the action. I still had on my 50mm prime and I wasn’t quite close enough, but he had the right stride, so I took the shot. I cropped in quite heavily in post, and then I ran one of the new Trey’s Lightroom Preset filters on it… In fact, I did this one during the class.
I’ve been using this app, Hotel Tonight, for a while now. It’s a really neat concept – every day at noon, hotels from all over the US release their unsold inventory for sale in this app at rock-bottom prices. If you’re able to wait until the last minute to book, you can get some amazing deals… it really saved the day during my recent trip to NYC. New York hotels can get quite expensive, but I got a great price using the app.
Virtual Photo Walks
During the New York event, we also decided to do this thing called a “Virtual Photo Walk” where we were able to have many other people join us at the event. People that join these events are often those that can’t walk or physically join us, so it is kind of a fun and cool thing to do. I put a little highlight video that they made over on the right.
Chinese People Love Them Some Apple
So I don’t know if I ever mentioned this on the blog or not. I don’t think I have. But whenever I walk into coffee shops or these sorts of places in China, a good 50% of the crowd has out their Apple devices. They proudly work/play along on them, having a grand old time. It’s so mega-trendy there that I can see this is just the beginning there…
Daily Photo – Shopping Scene from Beijing
Speaking of parallel universes (the question from yesterday), I often imagine I have side-stepped into one when I travel to other cities, especially as global commerce becomes more homogenized. For example, maybe you can see the Apple store in the background there. When you walk in, everything is exactly the same except for the language and all the Chinese people (of course). Now, this may seem like a totally obvious thing, but it is one of those other universes that is right in the middle of our own.
Is anyone else into the idea of parallel universes? I’m just sort of taking an informal poll…
Daily Photo – Ridge without Time
This is an unusual photo, isn’t it?
I started processing it, then stopped. It didn’t really require any processing… it just struck me as interesting and unusual. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I do remember being at this spot in Iceland when I took the shot, thinking it was ethereal and wonderful in a strange way.
I was just at Facebook in New York City and I signed the Facebook Wall at Facebook! Can you find my name on there? There’s many other names on there too hidden around… like Madonna and Jimmy Fallon.
Ghosted Waters
I used a program called Photomatix (Photomatix Review) to process this photo. If you’re on a Mac, you can use Aurora HDR Pro – this is the program I worked with Macphun for over a year to build. Oftentimes, when combining multiple photos of waves, the water becomes “ghosted” as it averages out all the waves. I usually don’t really mind that, and I feel it gives the ocean a sense of painterly motion…. what do you think?
Daily Photo – The Rocky Spanish Coast
Here is another part of the beach in Ibiza. I guess I could have been off taking photos of topless Euros, but I found the rocks so much more interesting. This is the problem with photographers… whenever we see someone taking a photo of a girl, we are more likely to look at the camera than the girl! 🙂
When I was getting moved into my new place in NZ, my posts became a little irregular. I never missed a day, but sometimes I was a little late rather than my normal midnight-central-time schedule! Anyway, things should be back to normal now… I was burning the candle at both ends… (not that I’m doing any less now… I just got that bit of my life under control!)
Daily Photo – The Opera Scene
The Chinese Opera almost has more photo opportunities than Burning Man. There are at least half-as-intense in their costumes, and every pose they get into seems like it is ready for a photo!
I took a great many photos that evening, and I still have many more to process. As I scrubbed through in Lightroom, this one really jumped out!
Thanks everyone for the follows over on Pinterest! Here is one of my favorites Inspirational Boards that you may enjoy… Who are some of your favorite people to follow? When you look at my boards, you can see who I follow and re-pin the most… seems to be a lot of people from France that I follow I think!
Old-Timey Photographers
I always think about those old-timey guys and how they used to have to carry around those giant cameras and go through all the trouble. I wonder if anyone will ever think of me like this… lugging around my big Nikon and a giant computer to process the photos… yes, I suppose they will. Or, hopefully my future self will think that about my past self.
Daily Photo – Icy Tones in Yosemite
We had a great time at the event at Yosemite. I don’t do many of those, you know – those extended trips with big groups of people – but it was a lot of fun!
I think I was out in this area with Karen Hutton, Thomas Hawk, and Robert Scoble. It was a wonderful scene of lines and strange colors…
