Stuck In Customs

All calm in London, I assume

There was all that media stuff about a month ago… and I know we have many people here that are from London. I guess they would be good people to ask how things are there… I assume the media scared a lot of people and whatnot…but I wondered what the current situation was like.

Daily Photo – Walking Through London

There are many nice things to see and do all over… It’s one of those cities that when you’re doing one thing — you’re pretty sure that you are missing something else! And it’s that same way with this fleeting sunset… the light was great almost everywhere… and I did run around quite a bit to see how many compositions I could squeeze into the fleeting time. My friend Scott Kublin was with me, running up and down the other side of the street while I was on this one.

My memory fails

I think my memory is most excellent, except for the times I forget things, and I generally forget about those too, so that makes this whole objective analysis impossible.

Daily Photo Mystery – Is this France or Spain?

Okay you guys… help me out here. I just can’t remember where this is. I know I have France tags in the photo, but that may have been a mistake. Part of me things it was Spain. I was sick while I was there, but I was still out shooting all the time, running my body into the ground. I think this is one of the reasons my memory is failing me… or something.

Live Hangout – Sunday 5 PM ET (2 PM PT)

Come watch the live video hangout from my Google+ account or on Keithbarrett.tv on Sunday at 5 PM ET. We’ll have on Gordon Laing, Jeremy Cowart, Thomas Hawk, Lotus Carroll, and more!

Daily Photo – Thunderdome – Blood on the Sand

I was only partially injured while getting this photo from the wild sands of Burning Man.

A group tenderly called the “Death Guild” erected a Thunderdome in the desert city here at Burning Man. I was riding home on my customized Mad Max bike (thx for making it for me +Cliff Baise !), and I saw hundreds converging on the Thunderdome for a massive fight. Screaming hordes started climbing the super-structure to get a closer look. By the time I arrived, the observers were 10 deep on all sides, everyone crushing in to get a view of the big fight.

I jumped off my bike, grabbed my tripod, D3X, and 14-24 lens. I ducked down and crawled through legs clad in leather and spikes to get just inside.

There were latex-clad women with billy clubs and spiked cudgels roaming the perimeter, keeping people from coming inside. I gave one of more severe-looking gals the international nod of, “Hey, everything is cool, let me stay here – I’m here with purpose.” This is a hard look to communicate with words, but I have perfected it through hundreds of iterations. Anyway, I settled down low to the ground.

Heavy metal music started blaring and the master-of-ceremonies-in-leather came in to announce the combatants. The screams of the fans mixed with the music in an aggressive cacophony. People mashed harder into my backside as another climber used the legs of my tripod to launch himself up into the super-structure.

I was rained upon by bits of rock, sand, and occasional strange fluids while the combatants got locked into their flying harnesses. These were complex bungee-systems designed to let them jump and fly in any direction. It seemed the only inevitability was that they harnesses would get slung around one another in a death-spiral where the fighters would just wail away at one another until one gave out.

I finally got everything set up (+1 EV, f/4, 14mm, ISO 1600, with shutter at 1/20th of a second) and fired away as they backed up then flung themselves at one another. It was brutal and the crowd was going absolutely crazy. Even more debris rained down on me from above as the crowd jammed me more from behind and above. I gathered a series of shots, watched more of the amazing desert violence, then crawled out, barely keeping my wits about me.

Towering Shots

What is the highest tower you have been in?

Daily Photo – The City of Lights

Oh God I didn’t want to go up the tower… but a strange thing pulled me up there… it sure wasn’t the crowds… And, by now, you know I’m not one of those people that just does things because everyone else is doing them… but I thought just maybe I could get a good shot.

I think the best shots come from the lower-tier instead of the upper-tier. It’s hard to say… although I don’t think I would ever be willing to stand in that line again.

By the way, in case you were wondering, using a tripod up there was not a problem for me. I was fast… but no one ever stopped me or gave me the business.

Of a Feather

I didn’t really intend this, but I find today’s photo very similar to yesterday’s. I guess it is just a coincidence.

Daily Photo – The Japanese Cemetery

I do love Kyoto and the quaintness of Japanese design. Of course, cemeteries all over the world are different, and each one is kind of like you expect. I don’t really know what I mean by that, since you don’t know what you will see. But it is never surprising when you finally lay eyes on it. Of course, you don’t know what any of it means, or the traditions involved, but you can sort of intuit the inner meaning of it all. And that is kind of nice.

Have you ever had a close encounter with a snake?

Tell me your story! Mine is probably not so great… but, it is a “snake story”.

Daily Photo – The Rest of the Chinese Snake Story

I had climbed up and down the spires of Zhangjiajie twice, which is twice more than my legs wanted to go.

I foolishly went up one of the spires at sunset trying to get a photo. I got to the top, and there was no good sunset. It was still awesome and everything — just no sunset photo. And getting up is not easy. There are little stairs caved into the sides of the mountain that spiral up and through inlaid cave systems. There is occasional ducking and a lot of worry about slippery bits.

So the time had come to descend. It was dark. Bear-den dark. I had a little light on my camera strap (not really a full-on flashlight like I should have had). I kept it on as I walked back. It was about a four kilometer back through these spires alone. I never saw another human, and I didn’t expect to see anything — until I almost stepped on this snake.

There he was, thick and sinuous. He was right in front of my path, and there was no way around him. I tried my best to ascertain his attitude, and I was pretty sure he simply wanted to rock my face off.

So I kept the light on for a while and wondered what to do. It was super-jungly around me and there where no rocks or any decent projectiles. I could have thrown a granola bar, but maybe he would have thought it was just an appetizer before me.

I started getting my tripod ready and fully extended so that I could just flick him out of the way. No, this didn’t seem like a good idea at the time either.

I got it fully extended, but I was still a pretty long way away. I was trying to figure out how fast the snake could go, and I envisioned many possible routes that involved the tripod, my feet, jumping, and escape vectors. All of them had this questionable (but important) variable of SnakeSpeed.

While I was running through a scenario, the snakes head popped up and he flew across the path faster than a cheetah. I mean — this snake was so goddamn fast that I could not believe it. It was like a fully-loaded slingshot released black bolt of shadow across the path.

I waited another few seconds before continuing on, feeling very foolish for even considering any of my previous scenarios…

Thanks again!

Several months ago I asked for recommendations about places to visit in Switzerland, so I wanted to thank you again for your input… it really helped us to have a great trip!

Daily Photo – Zurich at Sunset

We had a great evening in Zurich. We found a lovely little Italian food restaurant and everything was wonderful. Our meal finished just as sunset sprang upon us, so we had a nice walk through the city to find this spot to watch the sunset.

Subscribe to my Facebook Page

I maxed out on about 5,000 friends a while ago on Facebook, but now you can Subscribe to my Updates. The new look/feel of Facebook is coming soon. I think you will like it!

Non-Photography Pockets?

I notice that as I move around China that there are not many photographers. It’s not like the US or Europe where you occasionally see a few people out and about with a DSLR — but not in China. I think it is part of a more general sense of art being less important there. Or, maybe “less important” is not the right thing to say. Perhaps artists are just not encouraged as much here… this seems to be the sentiment I hear when I talk to lots of Chinese people here.

Daily Photo – Shopping in Beijing

Megamalls are everywhere here. And many of them are as beautiful and ornate as this one. In some ways, i think it is kind of cool that everything is ultra-modern and slick… in other ways, it’s not because it feels like I am back in Dallas or something… know what I mean?

Who knows… the Chinese people seem to love it… who am I to say….

An offer to buy blog posts

If you try to buy blog posts on here, you will fail miserably… I think people and companies that offer this do not know me. The most recent example (it happens quite a bit) is from Tamron. You can read the post/discussion here on Google+.

A Photo of Me!

Hehe… I usually don’t post these, but I thought my friend Scott Kublin grabbed a nice one. I guess I could throw in more photos of me, but… I figure that there are many things out there that are much more interesting to look at!

Daily Photo – Shooting the Matterhorn

Scott and I had just come from France together, and we were excited to be up in the mountains. The conditions were pretty good, so we were trying to get as many shots as possible while the skies were interesting. This isn’t even an HDR shot, and you can see how strange the clouds were! I have not yet processed my own shots from this event… but I look forward to it very much.

What is your eye drawn to?

When you are walking around a city, what is your eye drawn to most often? Is it clothes (textures or colors)? Is it architecture? Is it faces? Is it all totally equal, or does one take precedent over another?

Daily Photo – Outside the Restaurant

To me, it depends on my mood. My eye is often drawn to what appears to be a mistake at fist glance — or something confusing. In this case, I saw the red pants and the red lights in a strange configuration. And then, a micro-moment later, I saw the girl they were attached to. It all lined up so nicely that I grabbed a photo the second she noticed me.