Stuck In Customs

$197 Early Signup Group (limited time) 9 classes, 9 hours, see more details on the Webinar Page

More Survey Results I’m excited about the Upcoming Webinar! Even though people are signing up, we are still looking through all the online survey results to see what interests you. I’ll keep reading over these before the class to make sure I touch on all these various topics of interest. Photography is a very personal thing. People interpret what they see through the lens differently, and they look through that lens for so many different reasons. It’s been interesting to hear the many different reasons folks have given when asked “Why are you so interested in photography?”, and I thought I would share some of them.

“Why are you so interested in photography?”

Lifelong Interest:
“Always have been, from black and white film when I was 12 to digital now and I am 72.”

Cheapskate:
“I’m cheap. I can pay hundreds or thousands of Simoleons for 1 picture from someone else to put on my wall or I can drop the same amount into equipment and take a bunch of cool pictures and have something I made along with a story to tell people when they ask.”

Clumsy:
“I have a creative mind and ten thumbs, so my only choices for a creative outlet are photography or writing.”

Artistic Expression:
“The same reason I write music. Nobody can hear what I hear unless I play it. Nobody can see what I see unless I share it.”

Legacy:
“My dad is a photographer, my grandfather was a photographer.”

Girlfriend-less:
“Cause I don’t have a girlfriend right now.”

Need A Break:
“I love photography because it gets me out of the house. I work all day in a office and I have two small boys and its really nice to take a few hours for myself every once in a while.”

Right-Brained:
“Photography helps me see. Photography helps me slow down. Photography feeds the right side of my brain.”

Left-Brained:
“It’s the perfect mix of art and technical – being an engineer, I lean toward the technical. But my artistic ability is essentially zero. So photography can force me to be artistic with something that can be very technical, since the latter is only half the equation in photography!”

Timeline:
“Life is a timeline, and I like taking photos at various tick marks on that timeline where my life and others intersect.”

Time-Travel:
Time never stands still…and recording that one moment in time is precious. I am able to look back and remember what I saw and rediscover the experience again. I can also share it with people who have missed that moment…hopefully they are able to see and experience what I saw from that one snapshot and gain a better understanding of it.

Thanks again for taking this survey… I get comments here on the blog a lot, but it is very interesting to read through them in this format. I’ve said many times that the community here inspires me a lot… and now that you see it all laid out like this, I think you see why.

Daily Photo – Tower on the Azure Coast

This sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? “Let’s rent a car in Montpellier and drive along the Mediterranean Sea, jumping from town to town.”

It’s not nearly as easy as it sounds, especially when you get stuck inside of a confusing French city for an hour just trying to get out of it! There’s so much construction in Montpellier that it’s pretty dang crazy. At one point, we even ended up driving through the middle of the town square, at which point we realized we were indeed not on a road any more. This was very embarrassing.

But, eventually, we made it down to Marseille. That is another huge city where the roads are as confusing as can be. Parking by the seaside, I took a little walk to see this round tower that shot out into the midday clouds.

The Tobolowsky Files

So, while at EG, the very first speaker was Stephen Tobolowsky. He was hilarious, and, to my surprise, he told a long story that centered around Icelandic Horses. I talked to him later when we ran into one another at coffee, and he was super-nice. And no, he wasn’t the one I referred to early in the Matt Groening post. They are both nice in an unassuming Hollywood-way, and that is cool in my book.

I just found out that he has a podcast called “The Tobolowsky Files” that you might enjoy if you have a giant gap in your life and you have no idea how to fill it.

Icelandic Horse Photos

Speaking of Icelandic Horses, here are my favorite Icelandic Horse Photos:

• Horsey 1
• Horsey 2
• Horsey 4  (Horsey 3 was too silly)
• Horsey 5
• Horsey 8  (Horsey 7 and 8 were doing the naughty with a sheep)

Daily Photo – The Art Hangar

The Millennium Bridge crosses the Thames and terminates here, at the Tate Museum. They don’t like you to take photos in here. Heaven forbid someone should make art in a museum.

I mean really… isn’t it insulting? Who runs the committee at the Tate that decides, “Oh, we mustn’t let people take photos in this part of the museum. They might be making art! What possible reason would they have? Quite nefarious, no doubt!”

Anyway, I find it insulting how these museums treat me like a child. I hope they secretly have somewhat empty lives… and perhaps when they are in some ultra-modern part of the museum and prattling on about the hidden meaning of clump of steel and fluff… that they secretly know they are just spouting a bunch of nonsense in a grandiose effort to placate other fakers around them.

Monterey PhotoWalk

We have the Monterey PhotoWalk group up now on Flickr! Thanks again for coming out.. that was a lot of fun… enjoyed the conversations and the chance to shoot with you guys! 🙂

Daily Photo – Flowers and Carved Stone

I kept driving and driving and driving and weaved my way up past a town in the far northwest fjords. I saw this strangely (and nicely) shaped mountain with that strange early-morning lighting. Then, I spent another hour or so hiking around until I found this special kind of blue flower (EDIT thanks to commenters Scott & Guðjón – it is called the lupine or lúpína in Icelandic). Just when I was about to give up, I found a giant patch of them, so I selected the right lens and set up for this shot.

Have you heard of Larry Kagan?

This guy is awesome! He presented at EG with me, and he was in my little grouping of artists. It’s hard to explain the kind of art he does… but here is a little video and you can learn more about him and his work.

Daily Photo – Young Girl in Basket

The main river that runs through Feng Huang and is criss-crossed by many bridges and walkways. To get up to them, there are long stone stairways that switchback up the sides.

In the mornings, women go down to the river with their children to wash clothes. As they go back and forth to get more loads, sometimes they put the babies into the baskets on the way up again.

Live Webinar Class Registrations Open!

Okay, it’s now official! All the information and registration info you need is on Trey Ratcliff’s Photography Webinar page. Great name eh? Hehe… I actually struggled with a name. Like, for example, I didn’t want to just call it an “HDR Webinar”, because what I teach is so much more than just HDR. Anyway, it’s a 3 week course — 9 hours and 9 different classes. It’s gonna be awesome.

Here we are with the biggest conference badges of all time. They are actually super-big because they have the whole schedule on there. Matt is the awesome one on the left.

I Met Matt Groening!

While at the EG Conference, I met all sorts of interesting people, and I hate to say one was any more interesting than the next, but this one is a little special. I don’t have many creative people in the world that I really get giddy about, but Matt Greoning (creator of The Simpsons and Futurama) is one of them.

After I finished my talk (which should be available online soon), I was able to spend a bit of time talking to him… we talked about creativity, how to work with a team, about robots, about robots taking over the world, about how I was hoping that his strangest contribution to society would be that we would fill our lives with ridiculous and funny robots rather than the ones who simply want to kill us, and this sort of thing. Matt was SUPER NICE and engaging. Really… that guy is awesome.

I also met another guy I really admired artistically, but that did not go very well.  He treated me very strangely, and I felt foolish.  I can’t put my finger on it… I was really kind of crestfallen.  It sucked away a lot of my mojo…  anyway, I’m still trying to come to terms with that.

Daily Photo – Hidden Temple in Bamboo at Night

This place was pretty far off the usual beaten path but I was glad to find it!

In Kyoto, there is a wonderful and unexpected temple that weaves through an old bamboo forest. It weaves up, down, and around hills with warm, calming bamboo swaying about. Here and there, little temples, urns, and benches are placed. Everything is delicately lit to add to the mood. And just beyond where the lights are, the bamboo forest is pitch black and full of wonderful mystery.

Daily Photo – Hidden Temple in Bamboo at Night

This place was pretty far off the usual beaten path but I was glad to find it!

In Kyoto, there is a wonderful and unexpected temple that weaves through an old bamboo forest. It weaves up, down, and around hills with warm, calming bamboo swaying about. Here and there, little temples, urns, and benches are placed. Everything is delicately lit to add to the mood. And just beyond where the lights are, the bamboo forest is pitch black and full of wonderful mystery.

Hidden Temple in Bamboo at Night

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2009-09-30 06:58:30
• CameraNIKON D3X
• Camera MakeNikon
• Exposure Time30
• Aperture8
• ISO200
• Focal Length14.0 mm
• FlashNo Flash
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+2