Stuck In Customs

America’s Top Model

I think I’ve seen that show above only three or four times.  It’s too frustrating… it’s frustrating because I keep trying to look at the cameras, the setup, the lighting, the backdrops, the assistants, and everything…  but they keep showing the model over and over again…

It kind of reminds me of when my dad took me to those variety shows in Vegas when I was a kid.  I kept wanting the “girl parts” to be over with so I could see more of the magic tricks…

Daily Photo – Tattooed Girl with Umbrella

One hard thing about Burning Man is not “getting used to” everything around you.  Believe it or not, after a few days, seeing interesting people wearing crazy clothes and doing wonderful things becomes quite commonplace.  It’s kind of like living inside a non-stop Cirque-de-soleil!

I was riding by on my bike and there was another photographer taking photos of this girl.  He had just finished, so I swooped in, jumped off my bike, and took a quick photo.  I felt a little bad about jumping in at the end of his photoshoot, but I figured that the Burning-Man-chill-attitude would make everything okay… and I think it did!

The Disney Castle Shot video

I mentioned this yesterday after I edited the post later in the day, but I decided to go ahead and embed the video now as well. This was made by William Beem when we were together, shooting the Disney castle…

PhotoWalk Live Stream

Watch it here. We had only half an idea for the Austin Photowalk – to have the always-unpredictable Gino Barassa follow us around and do a live Hangout from the event. The video quality is REALLY bad, but you still get a sense of the event in a way…  and an accidental shot inside the women’s bathroom…

Thanks to Keith Barrett and Dave Veffer for helping it happen!

Daily Photo – Girl Running in Santa Monica

And speaking of PhotoWalks, this is the first photo I got during the LA PhotoWalk. After I was on the steps and gave my little speech-thing, I went down right to the water’s edge to see what I could find. This little girl was running up the beach to her dad, so I grabbed a quick one while I talked through the shot for the crowd. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, since everything was unplanned.

Behind-the-Scenes Video

William Beem (frequent community commenter here on the blog… you know him… you love him…) recorded a video of the situation below.  See it here on YouTube.

Missed our Cruise!

We were supposed to get on a cruise for Disney today and we missed it because of flight problems!  Oh no… so now we are scrambling to get down to Grand Cayman to meet the boat.

Daily Photo – Where the Princess Dwells at Night…

But, while in the middle of all this drama, I happened to already be Orlando, so why not make the most of it?

I called for a little PhotoWalk at Disney! It was really really really fun — and getting this shot was tough! I think +William Beem +Gilmar Smith +Keith Barrett or perhaps +Ali Elhajj got a video of me trying to convince half a dozen Disney workers to “sweep water” in front of my camera, which was splayed on the ground. At first, one guy didn’t want to do it because he might get in trouble… then the other acquiesced… and then, before they knew it, they were all being controlled like crystal farmers in Starcraft… we eventually got all the water in the right place!

I had to go over and whip out my sweet Android phone to show them some photos from Google+ — I found the one from Paris with the puddle — I said I needed a puddle about thiiiiis big … and eventually we got it all engineered out. They were all very helpful and nice… I convinced them all to come onto Google+ to see the final result — so I hope they are here! Hi guys – Y muchas gracias!

Where the Princess Dwells at Night…

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2012-03-31 03:06:38
• CameraNIKON D3S
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time15
• Aperture8
• ISO100
• Focal Length19.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+1

Trey’s Variety Hour #28 – Pinterest, Photographers, Copyright, and all these soul-rending Topics!

Thomas Hawk, Denise Howell, Kalebra Kelby, Patrick Di Fruscia , and Jodi Ettenberg join me for a lively discussion all about Pinterest, Photographers, Copyright, Online Sharing, etc etc…

Extra stuff includes but is not limited to: Sharing New Photography, Embarrassing Photos of Trey as a Kid, Other Photographer Discoveries…

Pinterest Links:
Trey: http://pinterest.com/treyratcliff/
Thomas: http://pinterest.com/thomashawk/
Kalebra: http://pinterest.com/flygirlkpie/
Denise: http://pinterest.com/denisemhowell/
Patrick: http://pinterest.com/difruscia/
Jodi: http://pinterest.com/jodiettenberg/

Thanks to Tony Wang from TWiT.tv and Dave Veffer for producing.

Podcast Options – Great ones! Get it first via…

Option 1: Subscribe for free in iTunes: http://goo.gl/ZAKd8.
Option 2: It’s not in “podcast” form, but you can subscribe to My YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/stuckincustoms
Option 3: There are other subscription options avail on the TWIT page athttp://twit.tv/tvh

Cable vs. Internet TV

How many of you watch MOST of your video on the internet? I wonder about this… I know that we got rid of cable about a year ago and watch everything over the internet now on our TVs… We use Google TV, Roku, and Apple TV. There’s no one-stop-shopping for everything video, but it’s not bad… What is your approach to this ever-changing video world?

Daily Photo – Driving from Petaluma to Napa

I’ve made this trip a few times, but it is usually in the morning and on the way from Napa to Petaluma.  This is usually the situation because I stay at my mom’s house before going over to do a show with Leo Laporte.  This time, it was the opposite (well, kinda… I didn’t sleep with Leo), but I did the show first then drove to Napa to have dinner with my mom.

Tom was with me, and we were on a sharp lookout for a good sunset situation.  While driving by this old barn, I saw a great opportunity, so we got out of the car to get all the equipment ready…

Why I’m Getting the Nikon D800

But Colby and Bill and Jarvie have the D800 — they show it off in the hangout video below!

So, I wrote this controversial article at https://stuckincustoms.com/2012/01/04/dslrs-are-a-dying-breed-3rd-gen-cameras-are-the-future/ about DSLRs being a dying breed… something that I still believe… In the article I said that DSLRs are on their way out and Mirrorless cameras will take over in the next few years. I didn’t see myself spending more money on DSLR equipment, but that is before the D800 came out, which is half the price and better for my situation than the D3X! So…. this is my loophole… hehe… and well… you can see more in the video.

Thanks Kent State!

Thanks again for the great day and evening.  I enjoyed the talk and meeting you very much.  Here’s some photos from the event.

Daily Photo – Severance Hall

I shared this photo in the beginning of my talk.  I shot it earlier in the morning with the Nikon D800 (that I borrowed from Lester) when I went to visit the amazing Severance Hall.

I’m going to start up my Nikon D800 Review page and fill it up over the next few weeks with my thoughts and samples from the camera.  I won’t really get the thing “done” for a while, but at least you’ll get some ideas of my thoughts and feedback on the camera.

So, Severance Hall was a beautiful venue.  It’s the home of the Cleveland Orchestra, and it’s one of the most beautiful conference halls in the world.  If you visit Cleveland, this is on the must-see list!  I got a lot more shots, and I can talk more about this amazing place in the future… for now… it’s been a long day and I’m awfully tired… enjoy. 🙂

http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/Other/Website-NonPort-Images/11211552_stVBTX/1776503734

Stuck on Earth 2.0

I wanted to remind you to grab Stuck On Earth (Free in iTunes) for your iPad if you have not already.  We just came out with version 2.0, which has some amazing features, like the ability to download a whole slew of photos from a map and save them into a trip.  Find out more on StuckOnEarthApp.com.

Daily Photo – Bridge Through Steamy Jungle

Here’s another photo from that Disney resort in Oahu.  I guess there’s nothing about that make it Disney other than it’s kinda cool and “feels” right.  It makes me wish all bridges had little lights like this!

Just in the distance there maybe you can make out a bit of light blue water.  That is part of a little lazy river that snakes around the property.  By this time, I was pretty tired and was really thinking about jumping on a raft while people handed me hors d’ oeuvres while I floated by…

Time Travel

This is one of the few places in the world where I feel like I’m time traveling…  If you could time-travel, where would you go and when?

Daily Photo – The Village of Lijiang

I tried to get this shot for almost a week!

It turns out there is a hill/mountain that requires significant planning and calories to ascend for this dusky time falls.  And I kept miscalculating the time with Tom.  We always thought the sunset would be a little later than it was.  And then we would start to get up into position, and we realized it was too late — so we went to go do something else instead.

This evening, I would snap a few photos and then sit down with my sketch pad and work on a few drawings.  I’d wait about 10 minutes for the light to change between photos… and it was nice just to listen to music and play around with some sketching-ideas…

Kent State Talk Soon!

See you March 29th!  It’s free and open to the public.  Get more location and time information here.

Also, here’s a video that the president just released about the event…

New Banner

So, a few weeks ago we swapped out the “top” of the page so it is not so supa-thick.  I haven’t heard many comments (a few) — what do you think?  Do you like that it doesn’t take you 30 minutes to scroll down to see the daily photo?

Daily Photo – San Francisco on an Early Morning

And speaking of the daily photo, here we go again.  And I’m excited to share this one!

I think this is my favorite image of San Francisco I’ve ever taken.  It wasn’t terribly difficult.  The hike was pretty short, even though there was one dangerous part.  The only other hard part, I suppose, was planning the day/night before so I could stay in Sausalito and wake up early for a quick jaunt over to this area.

Free PhotoWalk in Monterey

There are over 200 people RSVPed for the event… I hope to see you there!  For more information, see this link.

Speaking Soon at EG

Right after the photowalk is the EG Conference, which goes on for a few days.  The tickets are about $4,000 or so, so my talk there won’t be open to the general public.  It will just be a short talk this time, I believe…  Here is my talk from last year’s EG Conference.

Daily Photo – Little Telephone Booth in France

I went through a small market not too far from Notre Dame that was filled with thousands of little curios.  I had my 50mm prime on my camera, so I went a little crazy.  It’s a tough thing, really… how do you know when to stop?  There were literally 1,000 different cool photos to take in the little market… I made due with about 50 and called it a day.  Here’s one of them that I quite like…

A Few Days till the Keynote at Kent State

I’m looking forward to it!  If you’re in the area, maybe I’ll see you there!  More Information on the Kent State website…

Daily Photo – A Smooth Landing

This was a wild last-second shot!  I was driving down the highway along the coast of Oahu with Tom and we saw this area where these parachuters were practicing landing.  Not being a hardcore parachuter (having only done it once!), I didn’t really understand that a landing was something one could “practice” — I figured you just either landed or you died.  It seemed pretty binary.  Anyway, while there was all this activity, I jumped out there and put my 14-24 on my camera so I could get in close on some of the landings for some fun shots…

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