Stuck In Customs

Paris Quick Video

Here is a video I while in Paris that shows a little trick for maximizing the power of puddles!

The Final Photo

And here it is!

I think we can do all of that!  I’ll talk to the SmugMug guys about sending Anton out to meet me at some exotic spots… these things take a while to execute and plan, but I am on it!

Daily Photo – Big Sur Sunset

Last week I promised I would reveal the photo today that I took during the video above, and here it is.

I guess you can get the sense from that video how windy it was! What a crazy day… I spent all afternoon and evening getting ready for this. There was a decent amount of hiking, preparation, and walking-around to figure out the best place to stand.

Maybe the bad thing about that video is showing how easy it all appears to be… in future videos, you may see some more of the problems that I face and how I deal with them. In some ways, I think that is more real than something that appears to fairy-book perfect!

http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/Portfolio-The-Best/your-favorites/10668747_AuyBk/1380714825_rqpSX54/

Now you can get this wallpaper and many more

Trey Ratcliff Wallpaper App! Finally! This one is for people that would like to get some of this art on your iPhone or iPad to use as wallpapers. We’ve finally completed the new Wallpaper Gallery app for the iPhone and iPad (iTunes Link). It does cost 99 cents, but I hope this is not too much to ask to support your local internet artist! It comes with 17 wallpapers, and there are more avail beyond that in case you want more. Enjoy!

Google Talk and PhotoWalk Soon

See this Google+ thread for the latest. It looks to be great. Lisa Bettany, Thomas Hawk, and Robert Scoble will all be there, along with a huge host of others!

Different Perspectives

I was here with my friend Scott Kublin (his HDR blog), and of course we were both drawn to this bullfighter. He got his own shot of it, and I don’t know if he has published it yet. To me, it’s interesting to see what angles people choose and why…

Daily Photo – The Bullfighter

I arrived in Nimes a the day before the Sting concert, and I wanted to get a few shots of the old city right away. The weather and light cooperated!

Maybe this is the best preserved Roman coliseum in the world? I don’t know that for sure, but it’s the best one I have seen. And, even better, it’s still in good enough shape that they use it for concerts, bullfights, and even swimming events!

In front of the coliseum is this grand bullfighter. It’s kind of the main “meeting place” for many people in this area, so I had to be extremely patient waiting for people to clear the area so I could get a shot!

Google+ Hangout Video and News! First recording with Lisa Bettany now avail!

These Google+ Hangouts have been so much fun.  We’re doing another one at SmugMug on Aug 10th at 4 PM PT, and it will be recorded and streamed live like the others. Watch for it!

Here is our first recording… sorry for the low quality, but we will get better and better as we go along!

1:17 – I give a little view from Switzerland, where we recorded this Hangout.

4:20 – Chee Chew from Google+ (he manages the Hangout Team) joins us! He may or may not talk about a “secret button” for injecting himself into any Hangout.

12:30 – Lisa talks about how she has switched almost entirely to Google+

15:05 – Lisa starts talking about how she wishes Canon had a wide angle lens like Nikon

20:50 – Lisa asks me what stuff I take with me when I travel…

24:00 – A videographer in the hangout tells us about his Kata bag

26:30 – Sara Collaton joins the hangout! We talk a bit about street photography with her. And then we go off on a nice street-photography tangent… and I share a tip I learned from Alfie Goodrich

38:00 – Horror stories with Lisa.

46:30 – Lisa asks me how I arrange these trips (secret hint moment)

49:00 – Mitch asks me who writes my apps (it is +Mark Powell )

54:10 – Lisa asks a technical HDR question

1:01:30 – We talk about post-processing, eyes, truth, and other dreamy-sounding things…

1:03:20 – I talk about a strange RAW image discussion with +Neal Stephenson

1:09:00 – Someone in the hangout asks us about what line we won’t cross in Photoshop

Your favorite websites of artists?

Do you all follow any artists online (not photographers)? If so, who are they, and what is the website? I think we’d all like to see what you are into and make some new discoveries for ourselves!

Daily Photo – Arriving at the Grand Opera House

I went the wrong way, but I ended up here.

It was a little embarrassing, to be honest… I was taking Tina to the Arc de Triumph and I was quite sure that I go this certain direction… we were plodding along, and I look up say, “Oh bother, we’re at the opera!”

But, no matter. The light was good and I had the rig up and ready to shoot in no time! And, after this foible, we went to the real Arc de Triumphe.

http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/Portfolio-The-Best/your-favorites/10668747_AuyBk/1380698624_fPjvtzt/

All Burning Man Shots

Just visit the Burning Man Photos here on the site, and you’ll be in good shape!

An Unexpected Camera

I love trying out new kinds of cameras! I was afraid to use my main Nikon equipment at Burning Man because of the bitter conditions, but I did end up using a special camera for most of the shots! A guy from Olympus sent me a PEN E-EPL1 and I ended up running that thing into the ground! I used it to take 95% of my Burning Man shots, including the first one below. It takes RAW photos, and I was able to convert these in HDR with no problem… anyway, I thought you would find that was interesting.

Daily Photo(s) – Almost Burning Man Time

I’m getting ready for another big year at Burning Man.  Thank you for all the camp invitations – I am still deciding!

I put captions below each photo to give you a bit of context…  enjoy!

Coming soon – Secret Fireworks Spot!

When I spent the day with Robert Scoble at Disney World, we were lucky enough to have a personalized tour from Keith Barrett. Keith showed me a secret spot to shoot the fireworks — very cool! I’m still working on that photo, but I will release as soon as I am done… it was a very challenging shot.

Daily Photo – The Haunting

And here is yet another from Disney!

So, I was sitting there in the Tower of Terror taking photos inside the first room into which the group is ushered. It’s the one where they show that Twilight Zone clip. Anyway, I just stayed in there as five groups came in and out, trying to get a photo. Eventually, the cast member asked me (in a nice way) what I was doing. I told her that I thought the room was awesome and I was capturing it for my blog. She seemed curious, so I whipped it out (my iPad).

She started going through my photos and was very excited. And then she told me to follow her, and she opened up the little gate that gave me full access to the lobby itself. I grabbed many photos, and here is one of them…

Northern California PhotoWalk!

I’m giving a talk at the Google HQ on Aug 11th entitled, “Artists and the Internet: Digitally Extending Your Natural Self.” That part is closed (but will be recorded), but after we will be having a PhotoWalk at Stanford. We’ll have a bunch of people from Google and people from the community here. It will be great fun and I hope you can come!

To sign up (all my PhotoWalks are free), come see the PlanCast event.

Postprocessing…

This is one of the many photos I processed in the HDR Video Tutorial. During the class, it was suggested that maybe there is some kind of a subscription service where people could join and then download videos of me post-processing stuff. Would you be interested in this? I don’t have the time to do anything like this in the immediate future… but if people dig the idea, maybe I could do it some day. There is a lot of bandwidth/distribution/infrastructure stuff to figure out too, but I guess it could be cool. Andrea and some other people here are trying to talk me into it, but I wanted to see what you thought first. As usual, leave me comments, tweets, or Google+ messages to let me know what you think.

I checked our stats, and a month ago we served up over 5,453 GB of video and data… so this stuff gets expensive, sadly. Yes, that’s 5.4 terrabytes! That does not include any of the photos that are shown on the site… that is millions and millions of photos distributed, but, thank god, SmugMug pays for all that. Note that is just part of the standard SmugMug Pro thing and they do the same for all customers, although I am sure I overeat at their all-you-can-eat bandwidth buffet! For more info on that stuff, see my SmugMug Review.

Daily Photo – Flaxen Horse at Sunrise

The problem with horses in Iceland is that you can’t pass a farm with them frolicking about without…wondering…hmmm…I wonder if I could get a good shot. And then, of course, something in you tells you that Yes, of course, you could get a good shot. And then, you have to come up with reasons not to stop at every farm and take photos of every horse, since they all come out interesting.

So, naturally, this is a strange situation, in which you have to willingly force yourself to drive past something that you know would be amazing. But, well, you do it with the low-risk gamble that you will see something else amazing a bit down the road.

Flaxen Horse at Sunrise

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2010-06-12 00:00:00
• CameraNIKON D3S
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time1/2000
• Aperture1.4
• ISO800
• Focal Length50.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

Guest Blogger – Gary Arndt

I’m happy to introduce you guys (unless you already know him!) to Gary… he’s a great guy… and he travels even more than I do! Anyway, there’s all kinds of information in here you will enjoy. So… enjoy!

Starting Out

My evolution as a photographer has been an unusual one.

Back in March 2007 I sold my home, put my things in storage and set out to travel around the world. Until that point I had never used anything more than a point and shoot camera and didn’t know my aperture from my ISO. I had no formal training in photography and never so much as picked up a book on the subject.

I purchased a Nikon D200, which was way over my head, thinking I would just take some photos during my trip that someday I could print and put on my wall. When I started I shot everything in automatic mode, saved everything in medium quality jpeg’s and thought that my camera would somehow just make all of my photos great.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that the camera wasn’t going to make great photos for me. The first stop on my trip was the Big Island of Hawaii and you can see the results of my first attempts at photography. It wasn’t very good.

I began doing research and started following several photography blogs and podcasts. I gradually began adopting some basic best practice: shooting in aperture priority mode, saving in RAW, using the rule of thirds, etc.

It took a bit longer for me to start editing my photos. I was probably traveling over a year before I began to use Photoshop to do basic tweaks like adjusting exposure and sharpening. I still want to go back and properly edit some of my older photos for precisely this reason.

I basically started out like everyone else did. I started at square one and improved my technique by taking lots and lots of photos.

Solving Problems

Because I have no fixed home base, I have had to find solutions to problems that other photographers might not have to face.

The biggest problem has been backing up my photos. When I started out, there was not much in the way of portable hard drives. I assumed that I could just burn everything to DVD and send it back to the United States. When I actually tried doing this from Australia I found the process to be a nightmare. I had to burn almost 100 DVDs which took several days to do. The final result was extremely heavy and costly to ship.

After that I purchased two 300gb USB hard drives which I’m still using today. Along with another drive I acquired along the way, I keep mirrored copies of my photos of those drives. I also have two 1TB drives at my mothers house which I back up my portable drives to whenever I visit.

I have found cloud storage of RAW files not to be practical at this time. Bandwidth is spotty at best, even in countries which are wired, and my ability to shoot images often outstrips my ability to upload.

The other problem I have to deal with is weight. Because I don’t have a home base I have to carry all my gear with me all the time. This means I have to develop an extreme economy in what I carry. I carry 3 lenses and will not carry a 4th. I picked the Nikon D700 over the D3 because of weight. My tripod is a collapsible carbon fiber one that will easily fit in my bag. All other cables and miscellaneous gear is kept to a minimum.

Unique Opportunities

Traveling like I do has given me many unique opportunities which most photographers may never experience. I have been able to try my hand at:

Underwater Photography: I met a professional underwater photographer back in 2008 in Cairns, Australia. He had a housing unit for my camera and I went diving with him on the Great Barrier Reef. I got a few nice photos and an appreciation for just how hard underwater photography is.

Aerial Photography: On several occasions I’ve been able to take helicopter and small plane trips to take photos. My most recent experience was taking a helicopter and small plane trip over the ice fields of Kluane National Park in the Canadian Yukon.

Cave Photography: I’ve been in a surprising number of caves on three continents. It is a very difficult environment to shoot in because most of your light is artificial. (obvious tip: use a tripod)

Astrophotography: Just this last week on the island of La Palma in the Canary Island I was able to try my hand at astrophotography. La Palma has some of the largest telescopes and strictest light pollution laws in the world. It was a great opportunity to take some wide angle photos of the Milky Way.

Wildlife Photography: I don’t consider myself a good wildlife photographer. It and sports photography are two niches that I think really require a good, fast zoom lens. Nonetheless, I have had opportunities to take photos of birds, deer, giraffes and whales around the world.

Using HDR

While I do not consider myself an HDR photographer per se, it is an arrow in my quiver of techniques. Often I will take a series of bracketed images not necessarily to make an HDR image, but to have the option to do so later on or to just pick the best exposure when I’m editing. Another technique I will use is to create a pseudo-HDR image in Photomatix Pro from a single RAW file. I will often do this if I like the composition but I feel the image is flat. Sometimes the results are great and other times I will go with the original image. Another technique I’ve been doing is to tone map a single RAW file and then convert it to a black and white image. This can create an especially dramatic image if done correctly.

Travel Photography Tips

Having been on the road constantly for over 4 years in over 100 countries, I’ve developed some habits you might find useful when you are on vacation:

• Take photos of signs. The purpose of this isn’t artistic. You might visit multiple churches or temples and you could lose track of which one is which. By taking a photo of a sign with the name of the location before you start your session there, it will make it easy in post processing to remember exactly where you were.
• Use larger memory cards. I know there is debate about this, but I think the safest place for my photos is inside my camera. I find the odds of dropping or losing a memory card to be much greater than the odds of getting a corrupted card. I have dropped memory cards in the past and almost had one fall into a sewer. This is especially true if you have a camera that supports multiple memory cards.
• Scout the area. One of the first things I do when I arrive someplace new is to take a walk. Pay attention to the layout of things, especially with respect to the sun. If there is a particular object or building you want to shoot, use one of the server apps which will tell you where the sun will rise and set.
• Keep your backups in different places. If you backup your images to a hard drive, use more than one drive and keep them in separate places. If your camera bag is stolen and all your backups are in the same place, then your efforts have been in vain. Keep different drives in different places, that way if a bag is lost or stolen you will still have your photos.

The Future

Having lived on the road for over four years, I have no intention to stop. Even though I’ve been to over 100 countries, the majority of the world still remains unexplored to me. My current plans include a trip to Antarctica in December and possible trips to the Galapagos and Africa in 2012.

My photography will keep evolving too. One thing I’d like to do more is experiment with strobes. I think there are many opportunities for interesting travel photos using artificial lighting. I’d also like to do more underwater photography as well. The problems with that: the cost of the equipment and the difficulty transporting bulky underwater housing units around around.

The wonderful thing about travel photography is that the possibilities for growth and experimentation. No matter how many places you’ve been there is always something more to photograph!

Gary Arndt has been traveling around the world since 2007. He has visited over 100 countries and 150 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. His travel blog Everything Everywhere was named by Time Magazine was one of the Top 25 Blogs of 2010. He has also been posting a daily photo of his travels since November 2007. You can follow his adventure on his travel blog or on any of the popular social media platforms: Google+, Twitter and Face

Thanks to Luke!

I wanted to give a HUGE thanks to Luke, who manages our 24-hour customer support (support @ stuckincustoms.com). We get hundreds and hundreds of emails from customers that buy everything from the video photography course to the ebooks, and he is fantastic at helping people out… We just got this nice note from a customer, Patrice Ryan, and I asked if I could publish it as a way to publicly thank Luke!

“First of all, can I give you a gold star for customer service? I’m amazed you are still following up with me and appreciate this so much!”

Thanks again Luke! This operation would fall apart without you!

Meeting with Locals

If you are going to a new location, see if you can do anything to make friends with people that live there before you go. You may get an opportunity to spend time with them, visit their family, and see the sort of local stuff that is normally not seen by tourists. Obviously, because of this blog, I’ve got all sorts of interesting people to meet all over the world. But, if you see someone comment on here from a particular location, feel free to contact them (click on their name) and maybe you’ll find a little photo-friend to have an adventure with!

Daily Photo – Dinner with Friends in Nimes

The designer of the site here, Fabien Barral (see his site), took me to this wonderful little restaurant in Nimes for dinner. It was way off the beaten path, and we never would have found it… Plus, there’s also something very nice about sitting there with local people, talking about local politics, the economy, art, life, and everything.

Fabien is a great guy, and he’s become a great friend over the years. He just got finished redecorating a hotel in Paris, and I’ll try to get shots of that up soon.

http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/Portfolio-The-Best/your-favorites/10668747_AuyBk/1380703488_2BK42Fs/

SmugMug Review

You guys know that I’ve been using SmugMug for years. If you want to try it out, they gave me a discount code of STUCKINCUSTOMS to save you money. To really get the full scoop and compare to Flickr etc etc, see the full SmugMug Review here on the site.

Want to see more behind-the-scenes videos???

So, even though this video below is obviously a promo for SmugMug (they didn’t pay me btw), I thought it was SO COOL that I wanted to share it. The guy that filmed it, Anton Lorimer, is absolutely fantastic.

So, I liked it so much, that I was thinking about bringing him with me on a photo adventure and have him grab a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff. I’d like them to be both scenic and technical. What do you think of this?

I’m sure I could get SmugMug to spring for the cost of sending Anton along with me (I’ll pay for myself as usual.. I never accept paid trips or free hotels, even though I get offers all the time).

Photo Reveal – 1 week from Today

In the video below, you’ll see me in the Big Sur area of California. You’ll see me taking a photo of the surf and rocks at sunset… want to see how it turned out? I’ll publish it here a week from today!

New Video – SmugMug Pro Promo

Well, this is obviously an ad for SmugMug pro (didn’t pay for my appearance in the ad OR me putting it on the website, since you may be wondering)… but, besides the commercial side, it’s also amazingly cool footage. Anton followed me around a double-wicked evening of wind and skin-ripping sand on the beach here in Big Sur. I assumed he knew what he was doing, but when I ended up seeing the footage, I was really blown away!

If you like this “look”, we’ll assemble a lot more behind-the-scenes stuff. In future ones, I’ll focus on the technical details of the shoot, how I compose, how my camera is set up, and these sorts of matters… again, let me know if you want to see this, and I’ll put together a formal plan.