Stuck In Customs

New Video – PSDs to JPGs

That is maybe the worst title for a video ever, but it does get to the non-romantic heart of the matter. I’ve gotten this question a lot… well, I get a lot of questions a lot… so I figured I would just go ahead and make a little screencast video that shows how and why I manipulate files in one particular area of my workflow. Enjoy!

Daily Photo – Gentle Green Slopes to Rocky Curved Crags

After you are driving around Iceland for a few weeks, you get so used to wild landscapes that it’s hard to be objective. I force myself to wake up and be objective about the matter… and then, I suddenly come to my senses and I realize that scenes like this are entirely unique! So, that helps me to pop out of my truck and go on a short hike to get a good vantage point. And then I get back… process it many months later… and I am happy that I took the time to recognize it was indeed a special place.

Charity Update

Thanks again everyone for contributing to Team Stuck In Customs on Kiva. I think we are over $11,000, and that is great. What have your experiences been like? Are people paying you back and you are reinvesting? I think all of my little loans have been paid back, so I gotta get back in there and find some new good entrepreneurs to support!

Daily Photo: The Golden Horse in Iceland

We worked on this one tonight in the webinar, and I hope people didn’t get too bored. It’s very strange, because I am talking to myself for over an hour, and I only get occasional feedback when Andrea stops watching reruns of Ricki Lake. Anyway, I’ll just assume that people like seeing it, since people keep showing up.

Free Upgrade for the Digital Workflow eBook!

Already have this ebook from FlatBooks.com? Then you are entitled to a free upgrade with the new hi-def video!

I added a new 20+ minute HD Video to the Digitial Workflow eBook and sent out a free upgrade to all previous customers that had purchased the book. If you did not receive the free upgrade, please contact [email protected] – they will help you out!

Note that the new video is about half a gig, so the zip file will take a little while to download. The support team can help you with that too, if you are having trouble.

Daily Photo – The Lantern in the Streets of Old China

My time in China was winding down, and I took a flight back to Beijing for a few more days of exploration. There is so much to see in the old city that my month there was still not enough! And on one of these final nights, I decided to visit this very old section of the city.

It’s very well maintained with bright, fresh red paint, restored ancient lanterns, ornate windows, and the like. And inside many of the ornate windows are all sorts of antiques and old Chinese curios. I went into several, and now I am kicking myself for not buying more stuff. They had a bunch of bundles of old Chinese photos. I can’t figure out why I didn’t buy them… I think, now, that I was just overwhelmed by all the stuff that was inside. But next time when I go back, I’ll get a few bundles and bring them home to hand out at some event! That seems like a good idea.

Silver Efex 2

I mentioned how I’ve been playing with the new version of Silver Efex lately. I made this photo below the other night during the Webinar. I don’t post a lot of B&W stuff, even though I do make a lot of them. Maybe I should post more?

Daily Photo – The Barcelona Airport II

This is another reason I like to get to airports early. Not only do I hate being rushed, but I like to take time to explore with my camera. Well, I guess that only is in the case where the airport happens to be particularly beautiful, like the one here in Barcelona.

I always start out extremely rushed, because I picture security closing down on me from every angle. So, my first shot is usually rushed and not perfectly centered. Then, if the guards don’t gang-tackle me like I’m streaking at Yankee Stadium, then I keep adjusting my position and the camera until things are more and more aligned and composed to my satisfaction. This one was even a little bit tilted, but I fixed that bit with the crop tool later in Photoshop (as people saw).

New and Free eBooks Available

We have some new eBooks over at FlatBooks.com. There’s also a free one you get just for signing up for the newsletter, which we only send out about every two months or so. Enjoy!

Daily Photo: The Beautiful Space Shuttle Blooms Inside a Cloud

This is a 600mm lens, the typical large type of lens that many photographers use when taking space shuttle photos. Note that I can only hold a lens like this for five seconds before I scream in agony and curl into a fetal ball of pain.

(Edit: Welcome NPR, Today Show, Gizmodo, MSNBC and others for enjoying the shuttle photos and visiting – enjoy your stay!)

Staying awake for two days before getting this shot made my nerves a little frayed. As the countdown got inside the final two hours, I could feel myself in a strange mix of extreme fatigue and excitement. It’s a very strange feeling! And since this is the first launch I had ever seen, all my spidey-senses were tingling. This was also the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavor, so there was an extra layer of meaning on top of everything else.

I arrived right at 3 AM to set up my tripod (which, surprisingly, I did not use for this shot, but I’ll get to that in a minute). I then went into the press room to get everything organized for the upcoming event. I was also still spending time editing together the video for the webinar, since I know a lot of people miss the live version and like to download it after the event. So by the time the actual event rolled around, I was really starting to feel tired.

And here is the 50mm lens I actually used to get the shot. /me lurves it. This photo is from maestropastelero (click photo for link), creative commons, on Flickr

Even though I had my Nikon D3X set up on a tripod with my 28-300 lens, I actually shot this picture with my 50mm prime lens on my Nikon D3S! Everything did go according to plan, and I had run through the routine a few times before the launch. The plan was to fire away on my main body during the first 15 seconds or so. At that point, the D3X starts to have bufferring problems, so I switched to my Chewbacca-bandolier D3S. I pulled it up into a vertical orientation and rapid-fired just as the shuttle tore into the clouds.

As soon as the Endeavour worm-holed into the cloud layer, the strange staccato-bass of torn air came skipping across the water into the press area. The sound was not at all what I expected, but it was awesome dot com.

A Super Long Day!

I woke up and jumped in the car immediately to head to NASA. I spent most of that on the little adventure I describe below, then came back to the hotel to run the webinar. After that, I worked on the photo below before editing together the video (which is still going on). And then I’ll begin a long upload before leaving just after 2 AM to get to NASA at 3AM. I gotta get my tripod set up in the perfect place for the launch that will happen a few hours later. No sleep… just rockets and photo-editing… a marathon of fun! But I’m doing it for Stu, Gordon, Abe, Scott, Cliff, and all my other friends like you guys that couldn’t be here with me.

Daily Photo – The Mighty Rocket Awaits

Today I had a great day at NASA. I’ve come back to the space coast in Florida to see the space shuttle Endeavor blast off, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Around noon, I was invited out with a group of other Twitter peeps to see the RRS Rollback event. This is the slow-motion but exciting time when they peel away to the Rotating Service Structure to reveal the shuttle. It was so awesome that I almost forgot to send a tweet.

And, below, you can see a zoom in I took at 300mm. It shows one of the workers on the scaffolding making some final preparations for the launch.

This lens has quickly become one of my favorites. Some people complain that it is not very fast, but I don’t notice these things since I’m usually on a tripod. You can see more at the Nikon 28-300 Review.

Last Day To Register!

Remember that all-expenses paid trip to Austin to go shoot an abandoned power plant with me? Entering for the prize (and registering for webinar) ends in 24 hours.

To enter, just leave a comment here. We’re up to over 250, so be sure to get your name in the hat! Don’t forget it also comes with a free new copy of Photoshop CS5.

Daily Photo – The Midnight Wonder Garden

Whenever I am in a place like this, I try to linger as late as possible so I am the last one remaining. There are occasionally other people around, but I really prefer to be by myself. I enjoy listening to music, relaxing, and walking around to find the interesting angles.

These are the lower gardens of Kiyomizu-dera in one of the older parts of Kyoto. I’ve been to this area multiple times, and I try to go at different times of the day and different seasons. I’d love to be lucky once and catch it in the snow… I suppose that would mean I need to go in the winter or something.

The Midnight Wonder Garden

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2010-04-08 05:29:14
• CameraNIKON D3X
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time6
• Aperture4.8
• ISO400
• Focal Length16.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+2

Last Month’s Facebook Fan Page Impressions

I just saw the stats for the past month on our Facebook page.  It’s really crazy how much traffic that place gets.  Since there are so many people there, let me know if you have any ideas for fun things we can do there.  I still keep this blog as the “main cruise ship” of my online life, but the FB format does have a few nice things going for it…  It’s seems like another great way for you guys to meet one another on Facebook too!  Make new friends with each other and stuff… that is cool.

Suggestions from Locals

You would think I have a very sophisticated way of picking out hotels and places to stay, yes? Well, no, I don’t. I wish there was a bullet-proof system. I’ve tried many websites and I sometimes get good suggestions, but you never really know, you know?

I’m often most happy when I get a suggestion from a clever local person. This was the case with the Post Ranch Inn below. I was at the EG Conference in Monterey, and I mentioned to a fellow there that I was going down to Big Sur for a few days. He immediately recommended this place, and it was a slam dunk.

I mean, I guess I do have a blog and I can just ask you guys… maybe I will in the future. You guys really know a bunch of great places, and I should use this as a resource more… also, it ends up being valuable to other people too, since there does end up being a lot of cross-pollination as a lot of us travel around from time to time.

Daily Photo – The Post Ranch Inn at Dusk

How awesome is this room? Each of the rooms here at the Post Ranch Inn (nice time-lapse on that website, eh?) are cool, so I don’t think this one was special in that regard. In fact, I have another photo I processed last night of one of the little tree-house-rooms I saw on the way to dinner.  I’ll post that one soon…

Whenever I check into a hotel, I always feel like a dork because I say, “Hello, you don’t know me but I’m a photographer, so having a really good view at sunrise is important.” I don’t think this ever amounts to a hill of beans, except for here! The nice lady that set me up said that the mountain-view had the best light for photography. She said this with such authority that I did not question it! And she was right…

I took this one evening at dusk before walking up the path to an amazing dinner.

http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/Portfolio-The-Best/your-favorites/10668747_AuyBk#1290181371_jwRL4G

Silver Efex Pro 2

I’ve been very slow in trying out the new Sliver Efex Pro 2, always fun to play about with different processing workflows.

Daily Photo – The Wheel

Remember that great London PhotoWalk? I’m still processing photos from that event! There was one point where I climbed up on a low wall to get a shot of the ferris wheel. Getting up on the wall wasn’t too tough — the tough part was setting up the three legs of my tripod so they were pretty stable.

It’s been great fun (and kind of strange) to have hundreds of people also processing these images and posting them in the forums. I get to see many of interpretations of this same scene. There are so many different versions of the colors, the composition, the sharpness, and even more. This is very interesting to see how people take the same source files and make something that is interesting to them.

New Video for 100 Cameras in 1

Daily Photo – The Chocolate Shoppe

Some regulars know that I’m into gourmet chocolate. This is both good and bad because sometimes when I show up to events, people bring me chocolate from all over the world! And then, I get back to my hotel room, and I’m heavily laden with chocolate… and then the post-midnight haze sets in while I’m editing photos, and I start thinking, “Hmmm, I wonder what that 37% cocoa from Liberia tastes like…” And then it’s a very slippery slope.

Here’s another that I processed the other evening while people looked on… This is a chocolate shop in London that I found by accident called the Rabot Estate. I bought a lot of stuff here, and it didn’t last very long. I also had a very nice cup of drinking chocolate while flipping through some chocolate books in the back. I found out there is a chocolate resort somewhere in the Caribbean.. it’s like a regular Caribbean resort that also happens to be on a cocoa plantation. SIGN ME UP.

(EDIT – Thanks to M in TX in the comments below, you can see details on the Hotel Chocolat in St. Lucia here)