Early Look at Machine Elf – We Are Made From Stars
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!
Early Look at the New Machine Elf
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.
Daily Photo – Above Tunnel Beach in Dunedin
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!
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 🙂
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! 🙂
Daily Photo – The Remarkables on a Saturday Afternoon
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!
If you’re a Passport Sunday Member then you’ll see some selects from the recent photo shoot and how I processed them. Enjoy
Editing the Shoot Photos
You’ll see that I had incredibly challenging lighting conditions for this shoot… but I did the best with what I had. I was maybe being a bit hard on myself, as I like the way the photos turned out.
Here are Monni and Sue hanging out just looking awesome and stuff in front of The Remarkables. This was a shoot for her clothing label at Monni.co just in case you want some silky clothes or something. Full disclosure, I get 0.0001% of every sale.
At first, when we took off from Queenstown with Over The Top Helicopters, we didn’t quite know if the weather was gonna be good enough for a day of exploring. They talk to all the pilots and the general consensus was a big storm was coming in… but as we were flying around, our pilot thought he saw a gap. And, as you can see, it turns out the weather was perfect out on the coast 🙂
The best place to take this photo is from the top of Coronet Peak. It’s also a good place to find magic mushrooms. There are rumors that cops are around and they will arrest you for picking the mushrooms… so silly. Luckily there are more and more places around the world that are legalizing these perfectly fine natural substances.
A few days ago, we hiked up to the top of the Remarkables to see Lake Alta, but that was in autumn where there is no snow. Here’s one I got in the wintertime when the ski field was active… and no, I did not hike up here. I hate hiking mountains in the snow so I took a snowmobile instead!
The mountains down here around Queenstown are so high and so much moisture comes in that they are often covered with clouds that hug in close for a lot of the day. I’ve been meaning to set up a time-lapse to watch their movements… It’s also quite cool when we go hiking up in there because you actually get to hike through the clouds and come out the top.
Hey if you’re one of our awesome Passport members then today you’ll see a new video that shows how you can 4x the number of pixels in your photos. Fun!
Quad Size that Photo!
Here’s a cool video I made and here are some details from Adobe:
Raw Details, previously called Enhance Details produces crisp detail and more accurate renditions of edges, improves color rendering, and also reduces artifacts. The resolution of the enhanced image stays the same as the original image. This feature is especially useful for large displays and prints, where fine details are visible. The supported file types are raw mosaic files from cameras with Bayer sensors (Canon, Nikon, Sony, and others) and Fujifilm X-Trans sensors.
Super Resolution, introduced in Camera Raw 13.2, helps create an enhanced image with similar results as Raw Details but with 2x the linear resolution. This means that the enhanced image will have 2x the width and 2x the height of the original image, or 4x the total pixel count. This feature supports the same file types as Raw Details, plus additional file types such as JPEG and TIFF. Super Resolution is especially useful to increase the resolution of a cropped image.
Ready for a fun, nerdy geology fact? Sure you are! That pyramidal structure in the middle is called a nunatak. I used to have a double-major in comp sci and geophysics, but quit the latter after a fight with a moronic tenured professor. It wasn’t a fist-fight… an intellectual one, a fight with which I contend I won. I just studied geophysics it because I love the Earth and I think rocks and landscapes are super-interesting, not because I wanted a job drilling for oil or anything (the career path for many geophysicists… reminds me of a great Alan Watts lecture that it’s frowned upon for people to study things in universities unless they are looking to fit a cog in a machine) – anyway, this nunatak was formed when the two glaciers from the Dart and Rees from the left and right side came together to carve out that perfect triangle. Technically, it’s not a triangle or pyramid, but a sloping triangular prism… okay nerd talk done. Who cares? It’s pretty. Okay, a little more nerd talk… nunatak is one of the only Greenladish words in our lexicon if you’re into etymology. I got this pic on a fun helicopter ride a few weeks ago with Joann and some friends from Over The Top Helicopters.
