While on the European Photo Tour, we stopped in Normandy for the evening while on the way to London. We parked the bus in a car park and I jumped out to walk along the coast to enjoy the sunset. It turned out to be a rather beautiful one. I took a lot of photos of the old monastery, but some of the best light was in this direction.
Okinawa, although an island by itself as part of Japan, is like a country of its own. The culture there is like a small parallel universe of Japan, which is like its own parallel universe. The country does not have much of a “beach culture” where families go out to hang out on the beach, so most of them are quite empty. In the middle of the summer, the weather is still pretty hot, but the beaches are mostly empty and ready for you to explore. Like many islands, the clouds are often multilayered and idyllic for photography.
I think this guy is hilarious…
This is one of my favorite little alleys in Tokyo, and it is very close to Shinjuku. I’ve been there a few times, but I often forget exactly where it is. Sometimes, I purposefully set out to find this place, and I get completely lost and end up in a different area. I mean, that’s okay. I guess I could mark it on Google Maps, but I like the challenge of trying to find this little treasure again.
Sending you a message from my digital nomad bunker here in New Zealand. 🙂
Anyway, not to bury the lead, which I’ll get to in detail later, but here is the new Burning Man NFT called ‘Awakening to what Is’. You can also see the brand new Machine Elf animated NFTs on Foundation.
Well, the first Burning Man NFT (Non-Fungible Token – think “Bitcoin for digital art”) went great and for about 7 Ethereum and you can see how it progressed at https://foundation.app/treyratcliff/burning-embrace-10493 . All the proceeds went to charity, split between 3, with my nomination being a local organization here in Queenstown run by my friend Dr. Rigg called Southern Wellbeing Trust with the tagline “Delivering evidence based innovative community level solutions for Mental health and wellbeing.” Cool stuff… I may have to take all the donations back for my own mental health. Just kidding… fun mental-health humor. Keeping it light, you know… I do wonder how people can get through chaos without a sense of humor. Anyway, it may be clear to you now that I’m not a mental health professional, so it’s probably better to leave that to the experts and support them 🙂
The other donations went to MakeSoil.org and the Mountain Cloud Zen Center, which was chosen by Kevin Rose… who btw has a cool new podcast called Modern Finance.
And now there is a new animated Burning Man NFT at Foundation – it’s one of my favorites. Here’ the official description I put on there for this piece entitled “Awakening to what Is”:
“There’s quite an exciting time when one awakens into consciousness, albeit it may indeed be ironically solipsistic. As you ride out into the deep playa of Burning Man, fascinating art pops out of the ground to inspire you while you’re on your own grueling Joseph Campbellesque type quest. “Awakening” by Geurts/Elmendorf makes for the perfect meditation of serenity. As with all my Burning Man works, a percentage goes back to the creator of the sculpture. For the 4K 30s file, contact after auction.”
Also, I have made a new video that describes the weird world of digital art and NFTs. I currently am only working with Foundation, but soon, I’ll be doing drops on Makersplace. I’m also interested in working with Nifty Gateway and OpenSea, but I don’t really know anyone there… so, if you do, hook me up! 🙂
Oh, and we’ve started a 2nd account for Machine Elf animated NFTs on Foundation Check those out…They are quite visually appealing along with the amazing music. Here is a short preview from Machine Elf 36 – Open Heart. Click here to see it in full with original music from Sam Wave.
Stay awesome! 🙂
I have a small hike I do from my home here that takes me to this place. I usually listen to podcasts or audiobooks while I walk and look at nature. I walk up this fairly big hill, and along the way, there are little ponds. I stopped to grab this photo… I feel like just having a little reflection in the shot gives it a little pizzazz.
After we finished our photo walk in Barcelona, we decided to take the bus to Nice, France, to have brunch. That’s a cool thing about a tour bus, is you can kinda make up plans on the fly and the driver will take you there overnight. Then, you wake up, and suddenly you’re there in the French Riviera! It’s not exactly as easy as I make it sound… but it is worth a little extra work.
If you make it down to Glenorchy in the southern island of New Zealand, be sure to find this amazing walking path through the wetlands. It’s particularly beautiful in the morning just as the sun comes over the mountain to light everything with a yellow light. Another great reason to come in the morning is that it’s much more likely that the water will be smooth and reflective.
How cool is this? I’m a huge supporter of MAPS and this kind of news about New Schools Around the World for Psychedelic Medicine. Yep, I’m a big believer in this movement… and it will cure millions of people.
These are the incredibly awesome wolves at The Hills country club. I met the artist in Beijing, and we had a fun tea and crackers together in his studio. He didn’t speak a lick of English and I didn’t speak a lick of Mandarin – but we had a few translators, so it kinda worked. Besides, we would show one another art and we would ooh and ahh at it all 🙂
When Derek came down to visit, we spent a lot of time rolling around in grass of various heights. On this particular day, we decided to find some grass that was just a little higher than Derek when he was supine. It was the horses over there that gave us this ingenious idea.
Those guys from South Park have made a new comedy that uses Deep Fake tech to re-create Trump, Zuckerberg, and a ton more… super funny…
I kind of wish I had a wide-angle lens for this photo, but I had a new Hasselblad and I only had a limited number of lenses. But, that’s okay because it forced me to find the most interesting thing to fit inside of that rectangle. You may notice that it has a 3:2 ratio, which is the default for the Hasselblad (I believe). I kept it in that original ratio rather than re-cropping it.
Here’s awesome Rene doing his thing. Whenever he’s near water, most of his clothes come off and he becomes this amphibian kinda guy. This reminds me of a story he told me where he was trying to be cool on some rocks around a girl and then he stepped on a sea urchin and screamed, falling into the ocean.
