Here in Feng Huang, it’s good to go on a bit of an adventure at night to get the best shots. Then the entire city is very walkable, but there can be a lot of confusing twists and turns. I love getting lost in these old cities because inevitably, you end up finding some incredible photo locations.
I thought I would share some of my favorite photos from Beijing here. I went there several years in a row as part of a program. I ended up getting arrested, so I haven’t been invited back. These things happen. Oh, well. At least I got some good photos!
I’m excited to come back to China in June. I’ll be in some of the major cities, but I’m also quite excited to visit a few new spots. I’m not sure where I’ll go yet. I reached out to my friend Kevin Kelly, who is quite the demigod in China, to see if he has any suggestions. I’m looking forward to trying out the new bullet train system to go far afield. Whatever happens, I’ll take plenty of photos and share back here on the blog with you.
I spend a lot of time taking sunset photos on beaches. It doesn’t mean I’m an expert or anything, but I have a lot of experience with it. Anyway, in this video, I talk a bit about composition and my setup for the shot.
For a fun experiment, we made a fake Instagram account for Tane. I wanted to name him “Wolfgang Thrust,” but in the end, we decided this might cause a bit of bias in the experiment. Anyway, that has very little to do with this photo that I got at the Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C. This last weekend, I went through and started pulling out unprocessed photos from many years ago. This is one of the random ones I chose to process!
Here’s a promo for my new HDR Video Tutorial – I hope you get it and love it! 🙂
Sometimes I think I could make a whole blog just about horses in Iceland. I swear, I have So Many Photos of horses in Iceland, and they’re all pretty good! I can’t take much credit for them, you know, as the horses are just so darned photogenic. And then the whole country has a perfect backdrop… it’s just kind of hard to take a bad photo of them!
Here’s another show recommendation: Billions! It’s a drama based on Wall Street. Sounds kind of boring, I know… but still very entertaining! It’s one of the only shows I watch not on Netflix… it’s on Showtime and maybe a few other places?
Let’s talk about one of my favourite features in Aurora HDR 2018, Image Radiance.
The latest version of Aurora 2018 (for Mac and Windows) is here! I’ve been using it a ton and I think you’ll be blown away by all the new features, especially combined with all the features that you’ve come to know and love with previous versions. If you Pre-Order you’ll get a bunch of goodies as extras and a discount!
I remember at the time I took this that I almost DIDN’T take it. The colors seemed muted, it was quite steamy/foggy/moody, and also, I was quite tired. Maybe I was feeling a bit melancholy or something. Anyway, for whatever reason, I took it. And then, when processing, I recalled the melancholy mood and decided to give it a nudge in that direction.
I’m honored my friend Philip has used my imagery for his new Star Wars related album he’s just released right here.
And here’s his music on the amazing Comic-Con Reel:
And here’s the photo from that album cover…
Did you know New Zealand has 9 official “Great Walks”? I think there’s like 5 on the North Island and 4 on the South Island. How many have I personally been on? ZERO! Can you believe it? I can’t…. I gotta fix that… I’m a bit upset with myself really that I haven’t made that happen yet
New Zealand is a great place to hike, and this is from a place pretty close to my home in Queenstown. I think one reason it’s great for hiking is because there are so many trails, and most are pretty easy or moderate. I’m actually not into all the hardcore hiking… not for me! But it’s so easy to walkabout and see so much cool stuff.
Want to join the community and share your photos? Here’s some links for you! 🙂 Google+ turned 2 years old, and they announced a new Badge Maker that you can use for your website. I thought I’d use the new badges below to re-invite you to a few of the communities we started there! These are good places for you to share your work, if you so desire. Also, as always, I am happy for you to share your work here in the comments on the blog too! 🙂
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I had a peaceful evening in Wanaka.
There is this tree that sits out in the middle of the lake. It’s so unusual. I love the way it reflects back on itself in the smooth water. I was by myself, listening to music on my iPod, and just watching the water as it would calm down then get excited, then calm down again. I swapped out lenses a few times and kept moving around to admire it from different angles. This one was one of my favorites.
I really don’t do these very often, but it was getting confusing so we made a page that showed what, when, and where! It’s over on the Photography Workshops page, and I have pasted it below for you. Maybe we should have a punch-card like Subway where you get a free cookie if you come to 10 events! Hehe… we do have one gentleman that has appeared at a few of them and we may see him again! 🙂
| Location & Date | Workshop | Registration |
|---|---|---|
| Queenstown, NZ February 7 – 10, 2013 |
New Zealand Photo Adventure 5 Days with Trey Ratcliff in a non-stop photography adventure… 3 nights in Queenstown and 1 in Milford Sound. |
Contact us for Pricing |
| Christchurch, NZ December 6, 2012 |
Trey’s Christchurch Workshop Trey Ratcliff will lead a day-long class with an emphasis on post-processing photos. |
$499 USD $99 USD Kiwis (Hi Neighbors!) $49 USD NZIPP Member $49 USD NZ StudentsLearn more and Register now |
| Paris, France November 8 -9, 2012 |
Midnight in Paris Miss Aniela and Trey Ratcliff thought it would be exciting to combine her dramatic fine art photography with his epic landscapes into an intense hands-on photoshoot experience and workshop. They will share their secrets of how they envision, prepare, shoot, and process their photos. |
€1,190 EUR per person |
| Online Webinar August, 2012 |
Discover the Art of Photography Four part tutorial covering the fundamentals of how a camera operates, properly composing a photo, finding your artistic style and basic photo editing. Perfect for Beginning and Intermediate photographers! |
Sold out! |
| Online Webinar April, 2011 |
HDR Tutorial Webinar covers HDR and many other innovative post-processing techniques. There are over 11 hours of instruction across 9 classes covering topics for beginners and moving into intermediate and advanced topics. |
Sold out! |
| London 2010 |
HDR and Post-processing workshop | Sold out! |
| Tokyo 2010 |
HDR and Post-processing workshop | Sold out! |
| Austin 2009 |
HDR and Post-processing workshop | Sold out! |
Here are a bunch of photos I took at Burning Man a few weeks ago. I put little captions below each one so you can read more about the situation there.
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I was on Channel 7 a few days ago in Australia – here is the clip 🙂
My main camera I use nowadays is the Nikon D800, and I was a bit afraid to take that out into the desert. Instead, I took out my Nikon D3S to get some of these shots. It’s one of the six different cameras I used at Burning Man this year. I didn’t get much dust at all inside the camera… but I also never changed the lens or used it too much in sandstorms…
Over on Google+, I’ve started doing these weekly invites to the Variety Hour. You can accept over there, and it automatically shows up in your calendar… I think it’s a pretty cool feature.
As always, watch here on the blog too. The upcoming show has several cool and secret prizes to hand out! 🙂
It was my second visit to this particular opera and my third visit to a Chinese opera. I was fortunate enough to be able to move freely around the venue, as long as I did not get in the way of the performers. That wasn’t very easy, since the performers would often just start running down and around the aisles! They would dart this way and that, run around columns come in and out of random doors and re-use the same pathways that I was navigating. So I had to be on constant alert!
There was one girl that was playing a very unusual Chinese instrument. I’ll never get the name of it right, so I won’t even try… but she had this most unusual hat that I thought was quite nice…
