About Trey Ratcliff

Welcome to my personal site. I have made this site to explore a bit of creative photography and writing, and I know full well that people that Google me will end up here. Others end up from my official photography portfolio at www.treyratcliff.com.

On this site, I lay about 80% of my life out there for everyone to see - friends and business associates, current and future. Most of my days and nights are spent running John Galt Games, but I do find time to have a bit of a creative outlet here on my blog, taking pictures and doing a bit of writing. I find it keeps me balanced, and my mom can keep up with my various travels.

The Site

This site has been nominated for the 2007 Bloggies and now gets over 250,000 unique visits per month and over 3 million page views per month. It has spawned a ton of interest in my photography, especially from people that either want to order prints or want to use it for commercial purposes. My wife handles that business, since I am much too busy with the game company. I just take the pictures in my spare time, of which there seems to be very little!

Tutorials

A lot of people come here the two tutorials. The first one is about HDR photography, and you can get that HDR Tutorial right here. The second is a really fun texture tutorial that you can get to here. I get so many nice emails from people that want to know how I do my tricks, so I just took a long weekend and put it all together into a few succinct tutorials, since I don’t possibly have time to answer all the emails! Sorry about that… but I think you will have a good time with the tutorials.

Bad Pictures of Me from non-MySpace Angles

Here is a picture of me hanging out with the Amish for the day somewhere in Pennsylvania. Given the choice, I prefer to hang out with my own kids, who are considerably better at video games.

And below is a picture my mom likes of me. I’m there with a Buddhist Monk friend named Sokhoun, who, like the Amish children above, is also terrible at video games.

Awards & Interviews & Articles & Miscellaneous:

Smithsonian Magazine Category Winner - Americana - Photograph in exhibit at Smithsonian in DC
Smithsonian Magazine Finalist - The Natural World - Photograph in exhibit at Smithsonian in DC
2007 Weblog Awards Nominee for Photography
2008 Blogger’s Choice Awards Nominee - Hottest Daddy Blogger (clearly a mistake)
2008 Blogger’s Choice Awards Nominee - Best Photography Blog
2008 Blogger’s Choice Awards Nominee - Best Travel Blog
“Digg’s Favorite Photographer” at Baron.VC
“Fotohacker Interview with Trey Ratcliff” at Fotohacker
Front page of Austin-American Statesman Art & Lifestyle section
“Flickr and DIGG Celebrity” - Interview over at WPHJ
Interview about my creative process Matador
Testimonials from my fans - Thanks!

I can’t keep up with all the social networking sites out there, so I host all that metadata here… People always find these little categorical encapsulations of people’s lives to be interesting (and so do I), so here is mine.

Categorical Breakdown of Me:
The Basics

Name: Trey Ratcliff
Gender: Male (actually, the word should be sex, not gender, as gender refers to writing. This is a pet peeve of mine.)
Occupation: Dad and CEO of John Galt Games
Primary Language: English
Place of Residence: Austin, Texas
Sign, although I’m not into this form of mysticism: Cancer
High School: Jesuit Dallas
University: Southern Methodist University (Computer Science and Math)
Email: tratcliff at gmail.com
Skype (preferred): treyratcliff
AIM: treyratcliff
MSN: treyratcliff@hotmail.com
Yahoo: treyratcliff
XBox Live: AynRandRules my XBox Gamer Profile - I Am a Nerd - Dig It

Social Networks:

Flickr (my favorite, of course): http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TreyRatcliff
Facebook (for which I feel too old): ID: 502475833
MySpace (so ugly my design sense recoils): http://www.myspace.com/treyratcliff
MyBlogLog: http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/stuckincustoms/

In a Nutshell:
Most people find me odd, and others have trouble finding me at all. I’m often busy doing something terribly important, but it seems hardly important to the other person once they have found me and asked me what the hell I am doing.

Hobbies

Photography
Philosophy
Computer & video games
Writing fiction
Raising kids (little RPG chars)

Sports

Soccer
Jogging with iPod on too loud
Rock climbing
Snowboarding
Making up a lot of games if there is another guy and a ball involved.
* above hobby sounded sketchy

Books (one from each genre… no need to make a MySpace never-ending-Hawthornesque-stream)

George RR Martin - Song of Ice and Fire Series (Medieval Fantasy)
Atlas Shrugged (Fiction Novel)
His Dark Materials (Alternate Fantasy)
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Comedy)
Ender’s Game (Sci-fi)
Tale of Two Cities (Classic Fiction)
Journeyer (Historical Fiction)
Winesburg, Ohio (Short Stories)
Free to Choose (Non-fiction)
The World is Flat (Business)

Movies

(I hate listing movies because it makes me sound like a My-Spacey 13-year-old-girl, but people seem to like reading this sort of thing because they feel like it gives them a cutting Freudian insight into my psyche, a notion I heartily dismiss.)