Jessa is hanging out and drinking a select Brazilian hot chocolate in Drogo’s in downtown Austin.

This is part of a new textures tutorial I have going up perhaps Friday night or Saturday morning.

This is on South Congress just across from the trendy area where everyone likes to sit outside and wait for Sunday Brunch for an hour.

This is our office in downtown Austin. At my own writeoff expense, I had a bunch of my art printed on canvas and framed to make the office a bit more colorful and fun. We have about 60 employees, but in this office, we only have about 10. It’s the creative and biz dev HQ, and we decided not to go with traditional offices. It’s a converted loft that is all open and communal. We all sit together, share ideas, make stupid jokes, and crank out a lot of work. We are currently burning the midnight oil on WebWars, which is coming along great. Some people are currently attacking THIS website, in fact.

That’s my desk right there… a little messy and a little organized, just like any curious brain, right?

I took this to go along with an interview that is coming up soon on Blu Domain for my new portfolio at www.treyratcliff.com. I’ll post a link to the interview when it is up!

Also, I get a lot of questions about that picture of the roots growing over the tomb in Cambodia, so I posted it below as well.

Austin is known for its wild and crazy 6th street. This body piercing place attracts many an ill-advised visit after a long night of ill-advised drinking! Actually, I think body-piercings are cool, so I wish more people would be ill-advised.

Motion capture…

Here we have Isabella… at the park on a Sunday afternoon. Higher higher! BTW, when taking pictures of your kids on a swing, there is NO safe place to stand. Somehow the Newtonian physics of a swingset always bring a kid barreling into you from well beyond the expected two planes of Cartesian motion.

I am not yet in first place in my misplaced nomination for “Hottest Daddy Blogger” - I think I am on page 3 behind a blogger named “DrunkenStepFather”; who seems to have a lot of links to porn. I was completely disgusted after I spent 7 hours on his site. Surely you guys can vote me ahead of him at this link - bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/1228

It was also nominated for… and you can vote for:

Best Photography Blog - bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/124
Best Travel Blog - bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/1226
Best Blog Design - bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/1229

Believe it or not, she spent the whole morning in church then at Bible study before meeting us for a photo shoot. I asked her if she wore that outfit to Bible study and she said, “Ummmmm, no.”

I am meeting a group of friends tomorrow to do some lighting work here in Austin… experimenting with some new styles for fun!

This is one of the most famous old hotels in downtown Austin on 6th street. About this time of year, you can always find a bunch of lighted horse-drawn carriages throughout the streets.

I would appreciate your vote for the 2008 Bloggies! I hope you vote for www.stuckincustoms.com in the "best photography of a weblog" category!

They say the Frost Tower in the background looks like giant glowing nose hair clippers. From another angle, they say it looks like a huge owl. Who is this “they”, anyway?

Merry Christmas to everyone - hope you are having a good one!

The three places below are right here in Austin, Texas! I hope everyone out there is having a good Christmas Eve!

Here is an early morning shot from my street in Austin. This is a very steep hill that ends at a natural preserve in the area of Austin where there a bunch of rolling green hills. We often get the fog rolling in between the hills in the morning…

There are a few days left I think to see my piece in this Smithsonian. I know it was up for the whole month of July, but I don’t know about August. I’ve gotten a bunch of emails from people that saw it - thanks for those. I haven’t seen it myself there, but it is supposedly right inside the main hall upon entry into the museum. If anyone can give the exact location, I would appreciate it. Here is the featured shot that is there:

One of my fireworks shots is currently hanging in the Smithsonian, so if any of y’all are around DC, be sure to stop by and see it.

I took this one on the fourth… there was a big storm and I was lucky enough to get lightning and fireworks jammed into the same shot.

I caught Isabella and Ethan looking at a book together before bedtime…