This is probably one of my favorite times to take photos – when there is a mix of ambient and artificial light. I was heading out to go for a swim, and I thought I should just bring the camera as well – great decision. At night, I like to swim in the pool rather than the ocean… one of my only phobias is swimming in the ocean in the dark!
Man what a cool hotel! This is where I first learned to surf… not that I was great or anything. Also, I didn’t learn to surf in that little fountain there. That would have been a lot safer than where I actually did learn. Man, I was surprised how dangerous it can be and how that surfboard can slap you in the head at any time. They didn’t tell me that ahead of time and I had to learn the hard way.
Man, surfing is not an easy sport to learn. Here in San Juan is where I had my first lessons. I got up a few times and enjoyed it. I definitely see the appeal, but also didn’t get quite the thrill out of it I expected. It seems that certain hobbies either just click or don’t click. For me, photography… I’d much rather take photos of surfers than actually surf.
The old town area of San Juan is perfect for capturing photos at night. I heard the area might be a bit dangerous, but I did not encounter any of that. Maybe I was lucky or something! Anyway, I spent a few hours one evening walking up and down most of the streets to explore the place while capturing a few photos like this one.
My new friend Matt Conti has made an amazing journal entry about Africa! Wow – that was a lot of work Matt! Great job and amazing photos!
Matt came out to my workshop there in Africa… so, don’t forget to sign up for the upcoming one in New Zealand!
I really do almost zero shopping, being a minimalist and stuff. However, I do like to walk into quirky looking stores to be amused and take a few photos. Like this place, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for example. Seeing little things like this brighten my day with a little surprise here and there.
This is a video I made in San Juan just before the hurricane hit. I haven’t been back, but I may go later this year to see what it’s like now. I figure this area that I show is pretty much the same… the old town is a great area to for exploration and photography. I recommend it! 🙂
When I visited the reconstructed huts across Antarctica, I was impressed by the amount of scientific work that they performed inside. If you click on this photo and zoom into 100%, you’ll see all sorts of beakers, chemicals, and other things you might find in a medieval apothecary. I can’t imagine what sorts of scientific experiments were going on because there’s not a huge amount of biological diversity down there. It’s 99% snow, ice, and water with an occasional penguin.
How do I preface this? Hmmm, well I did a phone interview with Wired magazine, and then they followed up with some more questions, which I answered via email. I’m sure that 90% will be cut, but a friend asked me to share the full answers here! So, here they are…
Each question was related to the photo above it:
Budapest
Question:
“When you’re relaxed and your guard is down, beautiful moments spring upon you.”
We’ve got the story of the Ritz-Carlton concierge who insightfully referred you to the spa, which worked great in the last text. For this, can you tell me a bit — just one paragraph is fine — about the specific incident of being relaxed, your guard down, and a beautiful moment you can recall springs on you, as it relates to the photo?
Answer:
I have a feeling that everyone feels a bit awkward in a bathing suit. I mean, unless you’re one of those Instagram hoochie girls, which 99.9% of us are not. Anyway, once you decide to rock around a Turkish bath with whatever body you happen to inhabit, then an acceptance sets in, and you just kinda let it all hang out, then you are quite vulnerable. But vulnerability is a great chance to really absorb the moment and it forces your guard to be down. Letting go of worry creates a presence. This presence allows you to be alert and see things you might not have seen before, when the mind was clouded by a fiction it created for itself.
Wolfsburg
Question:
“If you open yourself up to the universe, cool stuff happens.”
“Comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
Can you expand on how those attitudes specifically played out for you in Wolfsburg?
Answer:
Rolling along the train tracks into Wolfsburg, I had no idea what I would find. No matter how old you get, there are always firsts. The notion of “first” indicates a unique experience; there is no way to have an expectation of what will happen. This then leads to the idea that you should have no expectations at all. It doesn’t mean low expectations, but, theoretically, one should have no expectations of what will be a unique experience.Once you make this intellectual decision to have no expectations, you embrace the universe itself and whatever comes at you. It’s not just that you have no expectations of what will happen with the universe, but you have no expectations about how you will react to it. Together, by releasing expectations of yourself and the universe, you may come to see these two seemingly discrete things as the same. This makes me feel very connected to any place I happen to be, and if you happen to be in a place, it might as well be around Wolfsburg taking photos of the auto mecca, because it’s pretty freaking awesome.
Moscow
Question:
“I used to worry that because I travel so much, I would run out of places to go. But the more I travel, the more I discover.”
We had a section about London, but The Ritz-Carlton asked that we stick to cities where they operate a hotel. For one of the others (my personal pick is Moscow, because the photo itself is surprising when one reads that it’s Moscow, but whatever feels best for you) is it possible that you had been there before, leading to new feelings there compared to a previous visit? The idea that traveling somewhere more than once leads to very different experiences is powerful.
Answer:
I think we all know how imperfect memory is. Even though I am now kind of a travel photographer, my degree is in Computer Science and Math. Our memory doesn’t work like a computer, and it is wonderfully imperfect. There are theories that we “chunk” the big bullet points of memory so that we can use those bits to simulate future scenarios.
So, when I got into Moscow for the first time, it was fun to “predict” what might happen. Whatever happens, happens, right? Well, it’s still fun to simulate a few possible futures. I was able to pull chunks from my first time to “strange” places (strange, meaning foreign/scary/challenging to me at various stages of my life). I thought about my the time I made my first trip to go to the subway in Tokyo, the time when I got stranded on Antarctica during a blizzard, the time I was arrested in Beijing for flying a drone over the Forbidden City, etc. These are all unusual things that happened to me, and everything turned out just fine.
Now, arriving in Moscow, I thought about all these edge-cases, and I simulated a hundred nutty things that might happen. After all, most of what I knew about Russia came from Reddit, so I was open to literally anything happening. And I wasn’t disappointed. Moscow itself is an amazing place, but what makes Russia so interesting to me is the people there, and the interesting Russian minds inside of them.
Here’s an interesting article about how Google is using its balloons to restore communications across the island. Pretty cool eh? I spent a few days with them here in New Zealand when they began testing the balloons… really cool tech!
It’s hard to believe I got this photo not too long before that bad hurricane hit. The whole island is so naturally beautiful that I’m sure it’ll bounce back pretty fast… I guess the first step is to get their infrastructure back together… they are all so industrious down there that I bet it will be back faster than anyone thinks.
Amsterdam took us into the second half of the European tour and was a return to one of the places I first worked on HDR. A great chance to think about reinventing the images with my current style.
Find out more about the tour at 80stays.treyratcliff.com
I went out here with my friend Scott Jarvie for sunset and more… we had the best time roaming around the streets and seeing what we could find! I’ve heard this area could be a bit dangerous, but we certainly didn’t see anything at all. Besides, Scott is a black belt with his witty responses, so no assailant would have ever stood a chance.
I did a Live Facebook Show where I was walking around Old San Juan a bit… it’s embedded below!
I’ve been a fan of fortresses and castles ever since I was a kid. When I found out there was a big castle here just past the old-city, I had to go! And if you stay tuned for tomorrow’s photo here on the blog, you’ll see the Old City of San Juan at night… I walked over there after I took this photo. I think it’s cool when two such diverse places are so close together.
