One morning along the coast of Gisborne was incredibly serene. It was one of those nice long mornings where I just listened to music and walked alone, seeing the morning pastels softly moving from one palette to another.
For those of you interested in the fun world of NFTs, the latest drop closes in a few hours on Makersplace. Check it out here.
There’s a huge area here between Queenstown and Arrowtown with rolling hills, lakes, little streams, and tons of different trees that change color in the Autumn. (Autumn is happening now in the southern hemisphere, btw – I know that’s always confusing to all you “others” in the northern hemisphere!) – The mornings are crisp and cool but the sun comes out in the middle of the day to warm everything up and help the colors to really glow.
After I dropped off my son Ethan for Outward Bound in Picton, I drove the long way back to take some photos. I got the quad out to get this one of these cool boat houses. Obviously, it was low tide, so I don’t totally love the photo, as I think it would be incredible at high tide with still water to make a cool reflection shot. But, you gotta take what you can get.
For Passport Members today you’ll see the How To of today’s photo. It was a fun one to edit from my 50th birthday partay!
In today’s video, you’ll see how I combined three images and then removed the ghosting. In a final step, I do some things to make the lighting a bit more dramatic and focused on Matt.
Here’s my friend Matt Bowden who is always up for a photo or two. He stood right outside the little awning that we built outside of the mobile sauna for the party. This is before dozens of us stripped down to jump inside the heat! Those photos will come later!
I took this on a little walk I do a few times a week from my home. It’s really hilly around here and every hilltop has a new view of The Remarkables. This one is a favorite angle that peeks out over all the Autumn trees. This is a panorama of 5 different photos combined into one using Lightroom.
I was just showing this video to some friends, and that reminded me of the “Making Of” video! That is now one of many videos unlocked with your Passport membership which release every Sunday!
And here is the Passport vid…
How about a blast from the past? Here’s one of my first how-to videos. I just watched it again, and it’s kinda lame… I’m not really selling it, I know, but it’s interesting to see how much better I’ve become at explaining things. Anyway, enjoy this 18-minute video of me rambling and trying to explain something.
If you’re a Passport Member then today you get a look at all 16 minutes of its glory. This is absolutely one of my favorite pieces from Machine Elf, and we have custom music from Joshua Ryan. Enjoy!
Man, this one just might be my favorite so far. It’s hard to keep track of all of them! My friend Joshua Ryan did the music for this one… I still have a lot of work to do on it, but this is pretty much 95% complete!
It’s about a four-hour drive to go all the way from Queenstown to Milford Sound, but it is incredibly beautiful. There are parts where you are passing and just kind of thinking… blah… yeah, I’ve seen all this before. But, at those times, I try to jump out of the truck and get the quad up to see if there are any cool scenes. This is one of those!
I’ve gotten really into this show called Hamilton’s Pharmacopia. I’ve probably seen about 10 episodes now, and I just watched this one about an Iboga ceremony in Gabon. This looks way more intense that other ones I have done, some of which you can hear about on my podcast page.
A few years ago I had a TV interview down here on that peninsula. I honestly can’t remember what the interview was about… but as with all TV interviews, the discussion was quite surface-level and we never got into anything deep. I knew that was gonna be the way it was, so I decided to actually do some other stuff while there, like flying my quad to get some cool shots like this!
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.
While I was out on an amazing photo commission, I got a bug one night to go out and shoot. I had a good feeling that I would have an amazing time, even if I didn’t get a good shot… So, I grabbed a bottle of wine and my headphones, put on some amazing music, and roamed up and down the beach for hours until I got this shot. It’s too bad nobody was recording me dancing… it was quite a scene, I tell ya!
