Stuck In Customs

Visiting the Fish Market

No trip to Tokyo is complete without visiting the Tsujiki fish market. It’s getting harder and harder to get in there as a random photographer. We got a guide from our hotel at the Ritz-Carlton. It’s also definitely not a place for kids – not because of the fish-violence but because of the danger levels of these little trucks that whiz around right and left.

If you’re a Passport Member then you get a little extra special bonus video!

Here’s a bit of what I was dealing with there!

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Daily Photo – Beautiful Tokyo Skyline from the Ritz-Carlton

Speaking of this amazing hotel that set up our fish market visit, this is the view from the restaurant called Hinokizaka. We had a fabulous meal there while taking photos out the window all the time. Note that the hotel bar is on the same level and looks out in the same direction. It’s the tallest building in Tokyo, so the views are pretty incredible!

Beautiful Tokyo Skyline from the Ritz-Carlton

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-07-14 11:31:26
• CameraX1D
• Camera MakeHasselblad
• Exposure Time3
• Aperture4
• ISO100
• Focal Length90.0 mm
• Flash
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

Burning Man Article Updated

Hi all! I updated my Burning Man article about how to protect your Camera in the wild conditions. I also linked to the upcoming Burning Man photo walk as well as linking to my Burning Man packing list for Photo Kits and my Burning Man Kit for Essentials.

Why not come to Aro-Ha?

This is not a paid ad or anything… I’m just a fan and my best friend owns the place. If you’re looking to come to New Zealand, why not plan a few days here at Aro-Ha? It’s about 45 minutes outside of Queenstown, and, as you can see, it’s quite the serene and beautiful place.

Daily Photo – Aro-Ha at Sunset

Here’s my favorite little hot tub in New Zealand. This is at the yoga and meditation retreat, Aro Ha. This is where we had our photography/yoga workshop last year. This whole spa area is European clothing-optional, which some of us took full advantage of! It was a great place to unwind after a long day of hiking, yoga, and photography.

Aro-Ha at Sunset

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2015-10-09 15:12:44
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time0.5
• Aperture9
• ISO160
• Focal Length24.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

Using a new Treybot

Well, not exactly a bot. It’s me… but I can kind of pre-seed some cool messages using FB Messenger. I used it not long ago to show all the “before” pictures of today’s photo. You can subscribe here if you wish! 🙂

Packing for Burning Man

Here’s a quick video I made that shows off the kit I’m taking to Burning Man! 🙂 Here are links to my Kits on Kit.com

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Daily Photo – Two Women in Kyoto

It was fun to return to the Bamboo Forest here in Kyoto once again. It was funny how much I remembered and how much I forgot. It’s still just as beautiful as ever. One key thing I figured out this time was to get there early before the crowds arrive. It’s always open, so that isn’t an issue at all. Anyway, there were still a few people moving around, like these two gals that were in these beautiful red outfits.

Two Women in Kyoto

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-07-21 23:44:15
• CameraX1D
• Camera MakeHasselblad
• Exposure Time1/125
• Aperture6.8
• ISO1600
• Focal Length45.0 mm
• Flash
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

Fun, Free, and Passport-Only Content today!

I used today’s photo from here in Queenstown, New Zealand, as part of a series of fun videos. For those of you that are Passport Members (Thanks btw – and recommend to a friend if you don’t mind!), you’ll get to see a little bit extra about the animation process in Plotagraph. By the way, here is a Facebook Link to the animated version of today’s photo.

A Beautiful Way to get rid of Noise

Here’s a video that shows an unusual technique I came up with to get rid of noise.

And then I decided to animate it also using Plotagraph. Here’s a video showing how I did that. (If you watched the other video above you can skip through the first bit of this)

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Daily Photo – A Panorama of the Valley

So this was taken directly over my home. It was made of 4 or 5 photos with the DJI Phantom quad. I stitched them all together using Lightroom, then ran them through Aurora HDR before doing those finishing touches you see above with the noise reduction tip. It was a fun project! 🙂

A Panorama of the Valley

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-06-30 17:51:46
• CameraFC6310
• Camera MakeDJI
• Exposure Time1/60
• Aperture3.5
• ISO100
• Focal Length8.8 mm
• FlashNo flash function
• Exposure ProgramProgram AE
• Exposure Bias

Editing “old” photos

Today’s daily photo I took about five years ago but never got around to editing. By now, you all know about Aurora HDR, and it was fun to take the original three brackets and jam them in there to see what happened. I fell in love with the result immediately and was quite surprised.

Daily Photo – Colors of the Countryside in Morocco

This is one of my new favorite photos! I took this quite randomly in Morocco. I was driving from the Sahara desert near Algeria over towards the Atlas Mountains. I probably stopped to go to the bathroom or grab a snack or something. While walking outside the car along the road, I saw this scene, and thought, you know, THAT would make a good photo! So I went to fish my camera out of the car to capture this.

Colors of the Countryside in Morocco

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2014-03-05 02:04:22
• CameraILCE-7R
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/1500
• Aperture5.6
• ISO320
• Focal Length210.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

Master of None

This is a great comedy! If you have Netflix and you like funny, unconventional stuff, give it a whirl. It may take you a few episodes to pick up on Aziz’s unusual style!

Interview on This Week In Photo

Here’s a new fun interview I did for This Week in Photo… whoa we talked about a bunch of things! Here’s links to a few:

First, go try out Plotagraph Pro. Second, here’s a link to our newsletter so you can find out about Aurora HDR 2018 for Mac and Windows the SECOND it is available for purchase. Third, here’s a link to our store where you can discover even more goodies. Thanks!

Daily Photo – The Fragrant Tunnel

This Wolfsburg is quite a place! I could never quite put my finger on it, but it was entirely unique. It was amazing for photography; there’s no doubt about that. Maybe if I spend more time here, I can figure out more about what makes this place tick. It’s largely there for the VW factory and the unique vehicle delivery area (see the category for the giant car-robot). But throughout the grounds are unique artistic things, like this rotating tunnel of fragrant flowers. What a fun idea!

The Fragrant Tunnel

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-05-22 12:39:51
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/320
• Aperture10
• ISO200
• Focal Length15.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias-1.3

More and More Video

I took today’s photo with a drone. I also got a lot of video… I’m just kind of collecting cool video from all over the place. At some point, I’ll find time to make a new compilation video of some of these amazing places. Anyway, lock this place into your memory, as you may see it again in a future video! 🙂

Daily Photo – Tuefelsberg, the Devil’s Mountain, the cold-war listening station

How cool is this abandoned place? I had never heard of it until our most recent trip to Berlin. There’s a hill here that rises up about 80 meters. There’s also an abandoned Nazi military-technical college. I bet that was gonna be quite the party school. Anyway, on the very top is this listening station. Now it’s been taken over by graffiti artists and there’s all kinds of crazy stuff happening inside. It’s right out of Fallout. There are creepy people milling about, strange shut-ins, etc – the whole thing is wonderfully post-apocalyptic. You can buy a ticket to get in, but they make you leave (quite forcefully) after sunset.

Tuefelsberg, the Devil’s Mountain, the cold-war listening station

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-05-23 21:10:03
• CameraFC6310
• Camera MakeDJI
• Exposure Time1/30
• Aperture2.8
• ISO250
• Focal Length8.8 mm
• FlashNo flash function
• Exposure ProgramProgram AE
• Exposure Bias

A little doctoring

In this one, I did kind of a fun technique where I took the bottom half of the photo and flipped it horizontally and reflected it. Most of the reason is because there were a ton of tourists and I was too lazy to remove them. The other is that I thought it looked cooler with a fountain on each side. I went in and made a few other smaller changes so the reflection was not perfect.

Daily Photo – Reflections on the Louvre

On the final day in Paris, our bus was pulling out to go to the next destination. Since one of our partners was Flixbus, they liked us to get photos of the bus in all these cool locations. So we stopped here for a moment to get some photos. After those, I ran over here to get a few quick photos of the Louvre. I can’t be there and not take at least a few!

Reflections on the Louvre

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-05-08 15:45:04
• CameraX1D
• Camera MakeHasselblad
• Exposure Time1/60
• Aperture16
• ISO100
• Focal Length30.0 mm
• Flash
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

A Look Inside my Studio and latest setup

Hey all – what’s the current State of Affairs of my computers and gadgets and goodies? I made a video, but remember you can check out my KIT for a listing of all my goodies!

A Big Thanks

I’ll take this opportunity to send a big thanks to the whole team that helps out around here. There’s a lot of things behind the scenes you don’t see. They all work really hard to make everything happen. Thanks again guys and gals! 🙂

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Daily Photo – My Very Serious Team!

Hehe – they are all great. Here’s three of them. That’s Tane, my assistant in the front left. Then Olya is on the right, our crazy Russian videographer. They are both kind of like models, so I take a lot of photos of them looking wistfully in various directions. In the back is Seth, our other videographer! I took this in Budapest right before the Hans Zimmer concert.

My Very Serious Team!

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-06-01 19:21:08
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/8000
• Aperture
• ISO400
• Focal Length
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

Phillip’s VLog

Here’s a fun video from one of my new friends I met on the European photo walks! Hi Phillip! 🙂

Portugal Travel Tip

If you’re on a limited budget, be sure to check out Portugal! It’s quite inexpensive and extremely beautiful. There are so many places to go see here. The country is much bigger than it looks on a map. I think people think of it as tiny because it looks smallish on the map, with Spain just dominating most of the peninsula. But when you’re on the ground, driving around, etc, you realize how big it is and how much there is to explore.

Daily Photo – In the streets of Sintra, Portugal

What a cool little town this was. We only spent one morning here after visiting the palace, but we had some crazy desserts. I never feel as bad about myself as when I start eating dessert at 10 AM. But hey, it’s Europe, and I figure a lot of that sort of stuff happens all the time here.

In the streets of Sintra, Portugal

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-04-17 09:45:46
• CameraX1D
• Camera MakeHasselblad
• Exposure Time1/125
• Aperture5.6
• ISO200
• Focal Length30.0 mm
• Flash
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias