Stuck In Customs

Free Drobo over at HDR Spotting!

This month on HDRSpotting.com, we are giving away a free Drobo! We are still in beta as we add features, and I do not give out invite codes (by design – to save me some sanity…not that it helps, everyone asks anyway). But, there are many codes out there form existing members. There are also some floating around inside the HDR groups on Flickr and Facebook, I believe. Good luck to you all, and I hope you win a Drobo!

What is a Drobo? See my Drobo Review.

Problem with the “Like” button

Can anyone help me fix the new “Like” problem on Stuck In Customs? Right now, when you “Iike” one of the daily posts here on the blog, it automatically puts a thumbnail on your Facebook wall. BUT, that thumbnail is always that green “FREE VIDEOS” (or perhaps another one) thumbnail, which is not right. And it looks lame, like a spammy-advertising thing, which it certainly is not. Anyway, how do we fix this?

Daily Photo – The Shaft

Casa Batlló on Passeig de Gracia is one of the most awesome places in the world. My camera was very happy (and me, by extension).

This is one of Antoni Gaudi’s masterpieces. That guy is amazing… It was certainly on my list to visit before the trip, and I did not really have enough time to spend there. And, I couldn’t use the tripod, but I don’t want to get into that discussion…just too frustrating.

“The Shaft” runs up the center of the casa. It reminds me of how each floor was a completely different visual experience. Taking photos in here was a challenge… I wanted to do the place justice.

Less than a week until the big PhotoWalk!

Coming up this Sunday is the PhotoWalk here in Austin! It’s a family-friendly event, so feel free to bring your kids and this sort of thing. We’re just walking together in one big group through the streets of Austin, having a good old time.

See Event Details on Plancast here. It’s totally free, and you don’t need a SXSW badge to attend. I’m looking forward to it!

EG Conference – About a Month Away

So, today’s photo is Jack Horner, the famous paleontologist (dinosaur-guy). He’s also speaking at the EG Conference in Monterey with me. The tickets are a little pricey (about $4,000 per person), and I think there are some remaining on the conference website.

Daily Photo – Jack Horner De-choppering

This is another picture from that mysterious ranch in Montana that I hint at from time to time. The only way to get there is a 3 to 4 hour horse ride or to take a private helicopter over the Rockies… it descends into a secret green valley… something right out of Galt’s Gulch.

Every few days, new guests arrive and depart. And, on this day, the chopper brought in the great Jack Horner. He’s one of those guys that’s awesome and doesn’t even try to be. He just is. Later that night, he gave a talk in front of everyone about some of his new discoveries in the world of dinosaurs. It turns out that Triceratops and Torosaurus are the same dinosaur! Cool. He had shown me research a year earlier at his underground (literally) lab in Montana that rests underneath the dinosaur museum. He had huge computer screens showing the bone histology, and how it changes as the dinosaurs age. Very interesting stuff.

Now Starring You

When I was out in California recently, I met Om Malik, the guy behind GigaOm.com. I didn’t really know what to expect. I got the vibe that he was either a long-time fan or a new one…either way, he could not have been nicer. And, of course, I was a fan of his too, since I’m a tech-news junkie. Anyhoo, we talked about all sorts of things, and he ended up writing a story called “Now Starring You in a Movie About You“.

While I was there in SF, I ended up stringing a bunch of little meetings together. A few hours later, I was still at Om’s secret hideout coffee-shop, and Frederick Van from This Week in Photo came over to get me on video (will be posted soon). While we were recording the video out in the little garden area, Om came right back out with another one of his tech paramours and sat at the table beside us. He has a knowing nod and wry smile that kind of sets you at ease…

HDR Tip #7 – the Last One

Today’s final one is Tips from the Clubhouse in my contribution to the week of HDR Tips with Rick Sammon. We have a private area here of StuckInCustoms that people get access too when they get the HDR Tutorial on Video. I asked them for some of their thoughts, and got some good ones back!

Did you miss the other tips?  Here they are, listed out:

• HDR Tip 1 – Create Your Own Future
• HDR Tip 2 – Plan for Reflections
• HDR Tip 3 – Leave Some Mystery
• HDR Tip 4 – Let the Time Flow
• HDR Tip 5 – Don’t Forget the Zooms
• HDR Tip 6 – Don’t HDR People
• HDR Tip 7 – Tips from the Clubhouse

Daily Photo – Crossing Tower Bridge in the Rain

My bulbous 14-24 lens is a problem in the rain! If you haven’t seen the Nikon 14-24 (see my Nikon 14-24 Review) before, then most people think it is a fish-eye lens, but it isn’t. The apex of the glass juts out almost just beyond the tiny bayonet, and it seems to suck rain drops into it! I’m always wiping down that dang thing.

But… here’s another little hint. That lens can shoot at F/2.8. That means you can focus on infinity for most of your landscape shots, and you’ll only see a few, if any, raindrops that form on the lens. It’s a very nifty trick! And, with a wide-angle lens, infinity ain’t that far away.

HDR Tip #6 – Don’t HDR People

The week of HDR Tips continues with Tip #6: Don’t HDR People.

I still see this all the time… I used to do it back in the day too, so I’m as guilty as the next. It can be a cool effect, but, for the most part, it just makes people look dirty. And not the good kind of dirty.

It’s also a big problem with some of these HDR videos, no? There are a few of these floating around out there… and people always look really really really strange in HDR video, and I don’t really like anything I’ve seen yet in that department. Anyway, this is not about video… it’s about photos… and try to avoid the HDR temptation when it comes to people.

Ron Martinsen’s New Tutorial

Ron is a friend of the blog here, and he’s an avid user of a lot of the little things we sell. He just put up a new free tutorial that has a nifty trick, and made mention of the special Textures package that we sell. See his new tutorial here.

Daily Photo – On Golden Borg

If I had stayed a little longer in this area, I’m sure I would have been assimilated too!

Not only were all the little buildings perfectly modeled, but the insides of the buildings had little lights. Every few minutes, they would flicker and change, and the lights in the overall room would dim.

So here’s a good idea if you go to Shanghai or Beijing, or any of these Asian megacities that have city-planning museums. These huge models are great for scouting sunset shots from a nice perspective. I usually use Google Earth, but taking photos of downtown areas require some thought about the altitude of the shot. So, for example, you don’t want to go to the tallest building in a city to take the photo, because you actually want the tallest building to be in the photo. So that means you need to find a nearby building that is “high enough” that still has a good angle towards the big building. Also, preferably, you’d like that second building to be east of the big building so there is nice light at sunset. Well, there’s a lot of things to think about, and these models are a perfect playground for perspectives.

HDR Tip #5

The week of HDR Tips continues with Rick Sammon. Today, I called mine, Tip #5, Don’t Forget the Zooms. I have haphazardly used the word “zoom” in a plural manner that is both irresponsible and confusing. But that’s the way I roll.

Daily Photo – Stone Steps in the City

How do you guys feel about hyper-manufactured situations like this?

I don’t always know what to think. There are a lot of urban areas like this around Beijing where they create little natural-looking areas. They certainly look cool, and perfect in many ways. But, perhaps it is a little too perfect. No, that’s not the right way to say it. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something doesn’t feel right about it. It’s almost because I can picture the designer deciding to put a tree in a certain spot or the selection of a certain shape of stone in another part. Maybe if the placement of items was truly accidental — true randomness — then it might look more natural.

But I see a lot of this in China. They have communities with giant apartment blocks. The new ones are all very modern and nice. And in the middle of them are fountains, small groves of trees, paths, swings, and everything. There are families out mucking about and enjoying it… but I wonder if it “feels” as funny to them as it does to me. I sometimes feel like I’m on a holodeck.

Update – Available Now!

Go Get it Now in iTunes!

Update 2 – Testing Closed

Now that the app is out, all the beta testing has closed off – thanks again!

Join our private testing group!

100 Cameras in 1 for the iPhone has been a huge success, so it gave us the chance to redesign everything from the ground up to take the experience to a new level for the iPad. And, well, with the upcoming iPad 2, it’s gonna be even more awesome (even though it will also work on the existing iPads, especially since we notice a lot of people enjoy re-processing existing photos). I won’t say more than that now, but you can get a hint as to some of the varied goodies in the screenshots below.

Want to join the testing with us? Just leave a comment below, and I’ll randomly select people and contact you via the email you used (or FB) when leaving the comment. So, it’s just not all fun and games… you need to crank hard on the app, try to break it, send us feedback, bugs, and all that sort of thing to be a good tester.

Good luck!

The Week of HDR Tips continues!

Today is Tip #4: Let the Time Flow. It’s been a great week so far, yes? Yes. Rick Sammon and I are each providing a good tip to help you take your photography to the next level… I hope you are getting something out of it. I enjoyed putting these together!

I thought it was interesting that yesterday, people discovered inside the tip that the object in the middle of the arena was a dirt-zamboni. I guess I looked at it so long, that I figured everyone would get to that conclusion.. but interesting that the mystery worked even better than I suspected!

Daily Photo – Icelandic boy after building treehouse

When I stayed at Helga’s delightful farmhouse near a northern fjord in Iceland, her brother came over and brought his son. They built a treehouse in the backyard and filled it with all kinds of goodies — all in one day! The sun was low, as it always is there that time of year. He was running around, silently playing in the back yard. I thought his eyes were so other-worldly blue that I just had to take a photo.

This area was very close to the little town of Akureyri.  It took me about three visits to this place before I was able to pronounce it correctly.  I feel like a damned fool trying to say some of those Icelandic words!

Want some Awesome Aperture Presets and Goodies?

Do any of you use Aperture to organize your photos? If so, my friend Joseph Linaschke, has released some New Aperture Presets with my Textures. Really amazing stuff… After you follow that link, just click on “Adjustment Presets” and you’ll be in the right area.

Joseph plucked some of his favorite textures out of my texture tutorial package and integrated them into those presets. It’s a pretty dang simple way to use them!

Besides the presets, Joseph has all other kinds of goodies in there too… ebooks and a little bit of everything. He wrote that remarkable ebook for Flatbooks.com about the Canon camera, so he’s a real pro. His stuff is the EXACT opposite of mine! I’m Nikon/Lightroom, and he’s Canon/Aperture. But we get along fine… like ebony and ivory.

HDR Tips Continue!

Here we are on day 3 of a week of HDR Tips with Rick. Today’s Tip #3 is “Leave Some Mystery”.

You might remember this shot on the right from Nimes, France. It is of an old Roman colosseum where they still have bullfights and concerts. I was thinking about visiting my friend Fabien (the website designer) this summer to see Sting there. It’s supposed to be an amazing place to see live music.

Daily Photo – The Terminal

You guys know I love the Asian airports. I can’t quite figure out why they are all so awesome. I suppose that the government just pours a ton of money into them. But, I don’t really understand the economics of airports, even though I spend a lot of time in them. I know the airlines have to lease the gates, so that provides a regular income, but probably not enough to pay back the billion dollar pricetag to get it built. I’m pretty sure there is a lot of incestuous stuff that goes on… I know some giant Asian airlines are subsidized by the government, which in turn give money to airports that are owned partially by the government, and it all gets more messy from there. I suppose I’m just used to the government doing everything badly here.

This is one of the smaller terminals in Beijing. The main terminal is huge, and you get to this one after you pass through security. The floors are so glossy, I feel like wearing ice skates!

The New Photography Podcast is up!

What do you think? Any feedback? It actually might be best to leave them on the YouTube page.

Free Photowalk Reminder

Want to join us in Austin for the PhotoWalk? It’s coming up during SXSW, and it’s gonna be great. Join the invite here.

The week of HDR Tips continues!

Today I’m talking about reflections, and new ways of planning for them in HDR situations. Rick Sammon has his new tip as well. For more, go see HDR Tip #2, along with links over to Rick’s blog.

I’ve always said there is no “right” way to make art, and I enjoy seeing other perspectives on it too — and I’m sure you’ll agree. Sometimes when I watch other people do things, I get a little confused and mistakenly see things. But I find that those mistakes make me think about things in a new way, so you never quite know where learning will take you.

Daily Photo – Tableau Vivant of California Dudes

I’ve had a nice ten days or so here in California. I started in LA, went up to San Francisco, then came back down here just before the Oscars. My agent invited me to some fancy-schmancy party in Hollywood. It was quite a problem to figure out what to wear to something like that. I felt like a girl. I mean, with the confused-about-what-to-wear thing… this is not something I usually think that much about.

It was interesting and fun. I didn’t even really fit in… here’s the basic conversation: “Are you a director?” No. “Are you an actor?” No. “Oh, you must be a producer!?” No.

But that night, I ended up staying at the Hotel California. I put a little photo there to the right… I found out I could check out any time I liked but…

And for our California photo below, here’s a bunch of guys that I guess have nothing better to do than walk around the beach all day with incredible bodies. Since I don’t have this, I can only rely on my personality, which frankly runs out after about five minutes.

Huge Geekbeat Contest

Cali Lewis and John P are giving away my downloadable HDR Video tutorial. Head over to the Geekbeat.TV page to find out how to enter.

A Week of HDR Tips!

I’ve got a special thing-thing for you this week! A special week of HDR tips! Rick Sammon and I are doing this thing together for fun, and I hope it helps give you some good ideas to take your art in new directions.  Go see HDR Tip #1, along with links over to Rick’s blog as well! This first tip is entitled, “Create Your Own Future”.

Daily Photo – A Gentle Stream Through New Zealand

All this news out of New Zealand is still upsetting. I’ve got a lot of contacts and friends down there… and I know it’s a rough time. Not much I can do… feel a little useless… so about the best I can do is post some serene and gentle photos of the nicer side of nature. I hope all my friends down there find it gets a little easier as the days move forward.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

The Saucer Section Separates

You know you were in for something special whenever the Enterprise got into one of those situations where the saucer section would separate from the warp nacelles. It always happened in the most extreme situations, and there was always a vital emergency. But the actual separation process seemed to involve about four minutes of special effects, which was surely long enough for the Borg to assimilate everyone.

What would have been better, in retrospect, was if the Borg would just assimilate the special effects department and modernize it a bit.

Can anyone figure out from where this photo actually hails (ahem).