Sujatmi’s dream is that her grandkids grow up to be brave and smart.

She is currently sitting in a makeshift annex area in a bustling riverside community in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. Dozens of tiny thatched and improvised houses are cobbled together and brightly painted. There are kids running around and other adults running after them, trying to get them to sit still so they can begin school. I’ve accidentally interrupted the whole affair while getting confused in the tiny alleys, no wider than a set of shoulders. She’s thrilled by the excitement as she looks on, nodding at me and the kids.

If you are into this portrait series (not all readers are… I think most like the landscapes!), then you can see more by clicking here.

While I was at this conference deep in the mountains of Montana on the Wyoming border, we took a break one day to hike up into the mountains for several hours. We hiked up with a varied assortment of people, including a world class opera singer named Laura Loge. After we reached the summit (where there was still snow) and shared a lunch, we began the journey back home. Halfway down the trek, we stopped in this beautiful little valley and we implored her to sing some opportune opera while in the green amphitheater.

She sang perfectly and it was an utterly surreal experience. I flipped on the wide angle to get both Laura and her enraptured audience to the right, a bit further down the trail.

Laura told me afterwards that it was actually called an "art song", as opposed to the opera she had been singing nightly by the fireside in the cabin to all of us.

If you want to find out more about Laura, visit her homepage at www.lauraloge.com/ !

It was just past 10 PM on the wet streets of Paris as I was getting lost on purpose around the streets near the Church of the Sacred Heart. I bobbed and weaved through various little alleys, streets, and tiny bakeries (where I would just have to stop for a moment), before finding my way to this little faire. There was a small carousel spinning away with tiny little French children screaming wonderful things…

Why was I walking around at midnight in the middle of a snowfall in Ukraine with my tripod shooting? I just can’t remember. I don’t remember much about the Ukraine and those cold nights. I can’t decide if I repressed them or have selectively forgotten or some delightful combination thereof.

And Ukraine taught me a new level of cold that I thought was reserved somewhere in the nether Dante regions…

…treywiki disambiguity warning incoming… note this is not to be confused with the ACTUAL portfolio site at www.TreyRatcliff.com. Be warned that it’s one of those vindictive sites that takes over your screen, plays music, demands your full attention, etc etc. That seems kind of rude and presumptive these days, to do something like that to your browser, a newcomer I hardly know, but maybe you will forgive me if you actually enjoy the art and the music as one. I don’t know.

But there is a new artistic community that has the strange name of the Behance Network. I put together a collection of 20 of my most experimental digital art pieces there. I’ve put a few of them beneath. If you also have an artistic side and want to give that network a try, I think it might be worth a try. They have everything from illustration to graphic arts to motion graphics… It’s quite possible I will tire of it in a few months and never go back… I’ve very open-minded about my web 2.0 abandonment issues.

I was dog tired after a long week at that ranch, so I took a 45 minute cat nap at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone just as it started to rain. I woke up as the storm had passed and a rainbow came out in the distance. So I quickly put together my capsula camera set and shot this!

You can see the sun clearly shining down in the foreground on the travertine and the bright orange of the bacteria floating in the steaming expulsions.

After that bright and sunny cathedral yesterday, I thought I would post some of the darker shots from some various cathedrals around Europe. I like how they are all somewhat scary and intimidating, no doubt doing their job very well.

I just read this hilarious line in Dawkins’ book on religion. It was mentioned in relation to the visible light spectrum to all the various waves that are out there. He took the analogy a little further and talked about how insects have their "burka slit" a little higher up to see the ultraviolet waves. I’m sure it was the only time a noted scientist has used religious garb to make a point about how species consume waves.

Seeing all the colors in this shot, while being in a famous cathedral in Holland, seemed to make a good occasion for that title.

As you all know, my work is Creative Commons, no commercial use without permission, so it ends up everywhere. I freely let people use it for their blogs, backgrounds, news stories, etc etc. I notice that the following photo from Amsterdam shows up all over the place! It shows up as credited to me, which is another part of the Creative Commons thing, along with a link back to this page.

The second one to show up a lot is the one from the Red Light district, which is a rather sketchy place to take my camera…

Another California sunset on a summer night…  Rarely is there a bad place to stand to watch it!

Here is Ethan out with his friend on a hot summer Texas day. It was a good water fight for dad to keep a distance with the 200mm VR to capture the action and stay dry.

I was alone in Yellowstone, and I found this other guy standing alone too… so we spent a short moment together.

It was a very long day that I spent in Akbar’s Palace. Early in the day I parted ways with my guide to walk around the grounds by myself. The palace was relatively empty, being a bit out of the hustle and bustle of Agra. Most everyone else tended to go over to the Taj, but I found the most delicate and beautiful parts to be in these oft-neglected quarters.

It was a blustery day on the coast as I jumped out of the car between squalls to aim the camera in the most dangerous and interesting direction. This camera is fairly good at keeping out water, although I’ve never tested it in a torrent… nor do I want to… even though I do have the sweet Nikon D3x on my mind…

I was working on this photo this evening with a friend to show him some of the techniques that have evolved since HDR started getting popular. I find my methodology changes and evolves about every two months or so. I look back at my old stuff in horror!

Ah yes… the wet streets of Paris here… Seems like an idyllic place for this little store called Cartier, eh?

Because my photography is Creative Commons (no commercial use without permission), I open it up to be used by other artists to create derivative works. I get all kinds of emails from all over the world to see amazingly interesting and great things. One such email I got recently from Katey, whose cool website I invite you all to visit, who has taken my photograph of Valeria’s afghan and turned it into a painting.

I’ve put the these below, followed by to owner of the Afghan herself, Katerina of Siberia. Note she does not go by that name in public, but I think it would be cool if she did.