An all-Texas episode of Stuck In Customs today! 
We have our big PhotoWalk this evening here in Austin. It’s going to tonight (Thursday, Aug 6th) at 7:30 PM. Be at the Driskill on 6th and Brazos. We’ll meet inside the Driskill in the Victorian Room. All are welcome, whether you are a beginner, amateur, or pro. It’s simply a very laid back event where we will walk to a location, meandering this way and that as a group, taking photos, sharing techniques, and the like. Afterward, we share the photos online, exchange comments, contacts, etc etc.
Also, if you tune into ABC news in Austin on Thursday for their midday news broadcast, you might just see me! I have a short interview on there. I’ll also endeavor to get a YouTube of it to share afterward in case you miss it (like I will).
To share your photos from the PhotoWalk, you can post links in the comments here, or you can put them up in a few places. Share them on Facebook here, or share them on Flickr here!
As for this photo below, it was shot about two hours outside of Austin in a little town called Brady. You’d like it. They have a Sonic there. This was a 5-exposure HDR shot at f/16. This kept everything in focus and kept the shutter open long enough to let the clouds drag across the sensor. In these conditions, you don’t have a lot of time to fool around because the sun is bookin’ it towards the horizon. If you are new to the site, then you might enjoy reading more about how photos like this are made in the HDR Tutorial.
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August 5th, 2009 | Travel |
I received some cool news today. One of my photos of Glacier National Park has showed up in the #1 spot of the Huffington Post for a story they did on the Top Ten Best National Parks You Don’t Know About. That’s another good reason to keep your images under the “Creative Commons” license; people end up using the photo for interesting stories like this. I know not all photographers agree with me – that’s okay.
The first one is the photo from the article. The others beneath it are some of my other favorites from the park. The second one is Ethan, standing on the edge of the “Going To the Sun Road”. Isn’t that a cool name for a road?
We’ll make a final announcement for the PhotoWalk on tomorrow’s post. I understand that I’ll be on the Austin ABC midday news on Thursday to talk about HDR Photography and the like. I’ll get you more details when I have ‘em!
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There is an amazing hallway that connects the The Hotel at Mandalay Bay with the rest of the casino. It’s long and at its end is a cool bar, which is a welcome respite no matter what kind of night you had in Vegas. Actually, I wouldn’t really know since I don’t drink… but, I do like to hang out in them, drink tomato juice, and process photos on my latptop. Yes, this is lame, I know.
I’ll be going to Vegas again in two weekends. I’ve got a list of places I want to visit with the camera… any suggestions?
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After we set up camp in a little wooded area, we headed off to see if we could get to one of the glaciers by sunset. This is near Cerro Torre, a region that is disputed between Argentina and Chile. I didn’t see much of a dispute while I was there — no armies or anything. I did see some wayward Guanacas, but I was not sure which side they were on.
I walked along the river until I got to a stopping point, where I got stuck. I couldn’t cross because it was too sketchy, even for me. So I set up here to prepare for the sunset. This was shot about two hours prior to the sunset while I was exploring the area. I’ll be sure to edit the other photos soon (ish) and get them up!
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August 2nd, 2009 | Iceland, Travel |
Did you know that energy is so inexpensive in Iceland that it is cheaper to ship aluminum from Australia to Iceland for its final treatment? I don’t know much about refining aluminum, but I do know that final process (bauxite scrubbing?) is quite energy-intensive. And it must be worth it to ship something all the way from the other side of the world. I can’t imagine there are many ports further apart than Australia to Iceland! I used to play this game on my Amiga called Ports of Call. I may have to boot it up to check!
Anyway, this geothermal plant was very interesting and perfect for photography. Asmundur and I spent a bit of time there moving around for cool perspectives. I’d like to thank him again for taking me there!
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At one point when driving through Yellowstone a few weeks ago, I got out of the car and started walking right into the forest on the edge of the road. There was a thick fog and the morning sun was low, creating an unexpected box of light. I kept walking and walking until I found this area. It just felt right for whatever reason, so I set up to take this HDR.
In other news, I found out today the exact meeting location for our upcoming PhotoWalk at Sunset here in Austin. We will be meeting in the Victorian Room inside the Driskill Hotel on 6th street to gather before the walk. It’s nice and air-conditioned in there, so we can save all the fun summer Texas sweatbox for the walk itself! Feel free to gather there between 7 and 7:30 PM on Thursday evening, August 6th. Once we’re all gathered, I’ll set the groundrules and then we’ll be off! By the way, a few people have asked if they can bring their kids, and that should be just fine… no problemo.
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July 31st, 2009 | France, Paris, Travel |
These Parisian facades along the Seine are about as classically European as it gets. When these buildings are lit up at night, they are really beautiful in their orange hues.
I took this after leaving Notre Dame and walking across a bridge heading north. I took so many photos of scenic spots… I could hardly figure out what to process first! I actually lament not being here at sunset, but the deep dusky blue still worked out pretty good.
Thank you again for all the wonderful comments you take the time to leave on here. I do read every one of them – my apologies for not being able to leave more timely and longer responses. I started a thread over in the HDR group on Flickr and I go check it once every so often… A guy got onto me there for responding slowly! Jeezo… Anyway, thanks y’all for your patience. In the meantime, I’ll try my best to keep servin’ up new photos for you every day!
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This is another shot of one of the coolest lounges in the world. It’s called the Crimson Lounge in downtown Chicago. It has incredible textures and lights inside that are very hard to capture unless you use this HDR technique. At least, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Now, if you really want to see the details, I will explain how to see the huge size. I sometimes expect people know how to do this, but many do not, so I am happy to explain. 1) Click on the photo, and that will go to the Flickr page. 2) Click on ALL SIZES+ above the photo. 3) Click on ORIGINAL. That will show the huge version… the only problem is it probably won’t fit on your monitor! You can do that with all the photos I upload… I like putting the huge ones on there for people to enjoy, use as personal wallpaper on their computers, other non-commercial purposes, etc.
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July 29th, 2009 | China, Hong Kong, Travel |
Hong Kong airport is a great one, as are many Asian airports. They put US Airports to shame. The security is actually nice to you there, and you don’t get all the attitude of the TSA. The TSA looks so important with their little uniforms. I think they are just silly… but it is remarkable how people react to uniforms.
I was going to find a pic of the silly uniforms so we could all make fun of them, but then I found out that the TSA has a blog! How boring. It makes me real happy that my tax money is going for the TSA’s social media operation. Look at this TSA blog entry on the Fourth of July and the YouTube videos they provided (especially the charmer about the dangerous “Sparkler”). Don’t worry everyone, the US Government is now blogging for you.
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Here is another photo that I took that evening when I was flying in a helicopter around downtown Chicago. The pilots were cool enough to take off the door to give me an unencumbered view. That part was great — the thing I did not expect was the 200 MPH backwash flying through the cavity. It made it rather tough to keep the camera steady!
This is a shot (on Facebook) that Fiona got of me hanging out of the helicopter (albeit on the ground!).
Now, I know some of you EXIF-hunters love to know all the dirty details of the exposure. I keep it inside the Flickr page if you click on More Properties. But to save you the time, here is the basic info. BTW, this is a single-exposure RAW file that I converted into an HDR. This was shot at f/2.8 with an Exposure Bias of -5. The shutter was 1/8000, the ISO 800, and it was shot at 18mm. The camera was the Nikon D3X and it was shot with the 14-24mm 2.8 lens. I have details of all that stuff over there in the DSLR Camera equipment area.
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Every morning in at the ranch, the horses would come running in through the pasture with a few cowboys leading the charge. I’d have to be quick to run out there with my camera and get in the right position. Luckily, since it happened each day, I had plenty of mornings to make mistakes until I finally got in the right position.
I remember reading about Degas and his horse paintings. Right at that time (early Impressionist period) is when photography really got started. No one ever really know what a horse looked like when it was running because its legs were too fast. Photography allowed Degas to be one of the first painters to get it right. You can see some of his horse paintings on this Google image search.
I got a question on Facebook about how I made this. It is an HDR, but I also used Lucis Pro. I have a Lucis Pro review here on the site if you want to find out more.
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July 25th, 2009 | Austin, Nikon D3X, Texas, Travel |
You all will indulge me from time to time with a cute baby photo, eh? Hehe… this is my youngest of three, Scarlett. She’s into patterns, soft food, and pudgy footstabs in the crotch. She also likes smiling, sleeping, and she prefers Mac to PCs.
If you want to see how much she’s grown up, here is a photo from her at Christmas, when we had Scarlett sitting inside of a Santa hat on Ethan’s lap.
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July 24th, 2009 | Iceland, Nikon D2XS, Travel |
This place is awesome! I love the “Blue Lagoon” area of Iceland. Before I went, I could only think of that old movie with Brooke Shields. I never saw it, but I remember being in school and some dumb kid told me it was soooo cooool because it was full of boobies. I never knew what that meant, for sure, but shades of it hung out in the back of my mind when I visited this one.
Can you imagine dipping your toes into that and getting inside for a nice warm soak? It’s wild! It’s hard to describe how wild it really is.
There is a whole complex behind there with lockers, showers, a restaurant, and this sort of thing. The design inside is all Scandinavian and modern. They have private rooms you can rent that are swim-up. I met a nice couple from Colorado and they invited me into theirs. It was filled with food and all kind of things — it reminded me of a James Bond evil lair. Next time I go, I’m gonna get one of my own! I checked on the prices, and they were relatively cheap, even back before the economy collapsed there.
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Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a place like this? I like these old European streets where great restaurants line edges… Let’s all move there… we can just go out and dine on the streets every night, eat fab food, see street performers, talk about photography, geek out, etc etc. Yes that sounds quite wonderful.
As you can see, I left in the HDR ghosting. Sometimes I quite like it, especially in these scenes where there is motion and feel like that’s part of the gestalt. I think these sorts of words are okay to use, even when not standing on a German street.
I am very appreciative to all the eyes out there scouring the intertubes! I had a nice girl who gave me the heads up on someone using images without permission. Her name is Shannon, and you can see her Flickr stream here. Thanks Shannon
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I put together this video while in Yellowstone. As I have said before, it’s kind of shaky and lots of bits are out of focus. A whole lotta bits in fact!
If this is the kind of thing you’d like to see more of in the future, let me know.
After you follow the link above, you’ll see that it shows the conditions I was in and a bit of the approach for taking the following photo. Enjoy!
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Thank God McDonalds opened around 5 AM!
I woke up just before to put on my photo-ninja outfit to be sure to get the sunrise in Yellowstone. Once you are in the park, there’s not a lot of food or drink options, and it’s not a good idea to take a bag o’ food out into the wild. But, it was a good idea to stop at McDonalds in West Yellowstone to get a giant coffee.
The rivers in Yellowstone are fed by both rain and geothermal sources, so the water is a bit more warm than you would expect. The cool mornings, even in July, brings fresh steam off the tops. Once the sun finally comes up, it gives everything a golden hue.
I know that many of you have used my World of Textures Tutorial (thanks!) to try some different things with your photography. I still do this a lot too. Obviously, I did it here as well, and used three different textures to achieve this.
Tomorrow, stay tuned for a new video that shot while at another location in Yellowstone. I gave a sneak peak of it to people that got the Newsletter… I tried to set low expectations, and that seemed to work because people liked it! Ah well… let me try to reset low expectations… it’s not that good.
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Just outside of Yogyakarta in Indonesia are the ruins of Prambanan. Getting to this place is a long way from home, so we tried to take advantage of everything in and around the city. Prambanan is a Hindu temple that was first built in 850 CE. It began a painstaking reconstruction in 1918. I can’t imagine what difficult work that must be.
Actually, it was quite nice to get out of the crowded city. Will and I had spent a long night walking around down near the markets. The streets were so crowded in the busy night streets that it was unbelievable. I had always known that Indonesia had hundreds of millions of people, but when stuck in the throngs, you can really feel it. Also, that was a disconcerting night because it was the first time I stepped over a dead body.
I have a few new reviews for you too! These were mentioned in the most recent newsletter that went out a few days ago. Both of these are short and sweet, since they are simple but great products. The first one is for sharing large files with others and moving files around between computers easily. It’s called DropBox and you can read a short DropBox Review here.
The second tool I’ve been using is for backing my files up onto the Internet (the cloud). This gives me peace of mind in case there is a fire and my local backups are also destroyed. Even if you don’t have a ton of photos and just want to back up your family digital photos, it’s a smart idea. And it’s super-cheap. You can read more at the Backblaze Review page.
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I had a hard-edged rule that I am now considering breaking. Who am I kidding? I’m gonna break it for sure.
Now that Ethan is eight, we’ve been able to take him to Disneyworld a few times. Isabella is three and she has never been. I had a rule that it is silly to take kids on vacation before they are five, since you really can’t form long-term memories before that age. Yes yes, I know… Some people disagree with this. Like my wife. She says it is not good that there will be a missing child from our family vacation photographs, no matter how good I am at photoshopping Isabella’s head on a stunt-body. I try to offer the counterargument that a sub-five-year-old can have the same quantifiable amount of fun (within an acceptable margin of error) while at home with Disney movies. This, then, is thrown back in my face with my three-year-old having a dangerous fascination with Cinderella’s castle. She can hardly believe that it is a real place.
So now we are going to take her to Disneyworld. Not for her, but for us. Well, also for her. Okay it’s kind of for all of us. Rule broken.
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July 18th, 2009 | Travel |
I put together a Genuine Fractals Review. This is a great tool for increasing the size of a photo without losing many details. I’m sure many of you have tried this with Photoshop and the like, but you probably didn’t know what you’ve been missing. After stretching in Photoshop, you may twist your head a little and say, “Yeah that looks pretty good.” That’s what I did for years! And then I gave this program a whirl and I was really amazed. Below are a few images from the review… but you can see all the goodies inside. Enjoy!
By the way, in case you are curious. The top photo is from Patagonia. The bottom one is some doors here in Austin in downtown… can anyone identify where exactly?
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Argentina is gorgeous. Have I said that before? Doesn’t it go without saying by now?
You really get to know a set of mountains when you have to hike around them. Fortunately, in the middle of these death marches, I was able to stop and drink in some of the scenery. It took a lot longer than necessary to get to the destination, but at least I arrived with a camera full of photos. That beautiful peak in the distance is Fitz Roy. I was very lucky to see it, because 90% of the time it’s covered with clouds.
So, last night something else lucky happened! Here are the high points:
- I did an interview that aired on NBC at 10 PM here in Austin. The segment was all about HDR and turned out really well. Jim Swift interviewed me and he did a great job editing together a nice little story. You can see the full video by pressing play in the upper left hand area of the TV Station’s KXAN site. There is a second video down on the left with some extra interview stuff…
- You guys should contact your local NBC affiliates and ask them to get the segment from KXAN – that would be cool!
- The story also mentioned the HDR Tutorial, which you can get to via that link.
- The news segment mentioned an upcoming PhotoWalk in Austin on August 6 that I am organizing. You can find out more inside the Facebook Event!
You can click that picture just above to visit the NBC KXAN site to see the whole segment with Jim Swift.
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Vegas is filled with all these cool secret spots. I suppose this one isn’t all that secret, but I had never heard of it! This is the entrance to the Skylofts At MGM Grand Las Vegas. And this is just the elevator bank! I got a nice little private tour of some of the suites and they were quite amazing. I have those pics sitting in waiting, still unpublished. At first, I was thinking these were the kinds of places that were saved for the uber-elite whales of Vegas, but the prices aren’t that different than a nice Four Seasons.
I’ve been working on editing a new video of how I took an HDR photo in Yellowstone. I’ll give a first look to everyone that is on the Newsletter list. We’ll try to get that thing out this weekend or so! Now, I can tell you that as I edit this thing… it’s very shaky! What can I say… I just used one of those little Flip Video jobs. So, obviously, I’m trying to undersell the thing…. but maybe y’all can get some good information about how I took one of the Yellowstone shots.
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July 15th, 2009 | Austin, Nikon D3X, Texas, Travel |
This is the famous Stevie Ray Vaughn statue in Austin. It’s almost as famous as that little statue of mermaid in Copenhagen, Denmark (at least to Texans). It sits on the edge of Lady Bird Lake and I see it almost every day when I go on a run. In fact, I saw it today. We’ve had over a week of 100+ degree days here in Austin, and it’s getting a little old. I’m not the young man I used to be when it comes to this sort of thing.
You can see a few cranes out there over downtown. They are in the middle of building two more high rise condos. I’ve been waiting patiently for them to finish so I can grab a shot of the new Austin skyline of 2010. 2010 – it’s pretty close – can you believe it?
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