Twitter and Twitter Lists

Follow @TreyRatcliff

It’s been a while since I mentioned this stuff, and I know a bunch of y’all are on Twitter. A while back, I put together a bunch of “Twitter Lists” that will be helpful if you are new to Twitter or simply looking for more people to follow.

Daily Photo – Underwing

Here’s another handheld job from the Air & Space Museum in Washington DC. I sent out a tweet a few weeks ago and got in touch with the gal that works in the public affairs office… I twitter-charmed her into giving me the thumbs up to use a tripod next time! It took 140 delicate characters to make that happen… there are still more steps, but I am well on the way to getting proper permission. It’s too hard to sneak a tripod into this place… just forget it… armed guards and that sort of thing…

Workshop review from Jim Caldwell

At the Florida workshop, a nice gentleman named Jim Caldwell came up to interview me on camera during the first lunch break.  He was a heck of a nice guy, and today he sent me this HDR workshop review that he just released.  Thanks Jim!

First Nikon D3S Photo

I’m still writing my Nikon D3S Review, so get ready for that.  I think I’ll give the first look to people that subscribe to the newsletter.  So, far, I’m very impressed.  In prepping for the event, below is an HDR photo I took yesterday with the new camera.

Daily Photo – The Shuttle in Spacedock

I finally got to see the Space Shuttle!  It’s one of those things a young boy always dreams of seeing, don’t you know?  I’m still waiting on that phone call from NASA where they invite me to see one blast off.  I’d love to do a creative shot there…

This was shot in the new Air and Space Museum on DC.  Yes, not that old one that I used to think was cool when I was a kid.  This is a new and improved center that is completely unbelievable. I had a small argument with a security guard that would not let me take my tripod.  He said I needed a “blue card”.  I asked how to get that and he said the only person that could possibly give it to me was probably at home.  There were a number of bureaucracies where I could have filed a series of complaints, but only if such complaints were filled out in a way as pre-approved by other bureaucracies.  I did send out a self-serving Tweet to @Smithsonian asking them for special dispensation — I hoped to sway them since, after all, one of my photos did hang in the Smithsonian.  They did indeed respond, but one day late. So, I’ll still keep @Smithsonian on one of my Five Twitter Lists.

So, I was forced to take my HDR shots with a hand-held pose.  How barbaric and depressing.  I would try to wedge myself up against a beam or a foreigner when possible, but that rarely works out as good as a tripod.  Those things are never placed in the right compositional spots, sadly.

But, I did have the Nikon D3S as a backup, and I fired this one off.  It was a 4-exposure HDR from -2 to +1.  ISO 400, 23mm, f/6.7 and 1/6 second shutter speed. The +2 exposure was too blurry, and I got most of the light I needed out of the +1 anyway.

Here are some of the rare but always cool mammatus clouds… these were captured in Virginia over the Potomac.

Here is an oil spill I found in Virginia. Well, it’s not really an oil spill, it’s more of an oil-leak that is natural and bubbles up from under the river.

Here are a few shots I took around Alexandria just as it started to get darker.

I got this quaint picture of a nice Virginia small town a few weeks ago. I did manage to crop out the homeless guy sleeping in the town square, the trio playing Britney Spears’ tunes on the corner with buckets, and the two Starbucks within foaming distance of one another. Speaking of which, right after I took this picture, I went to Starbucks to get something foamy.