We decided at the last minute to stop here at Dove Mountain in Arizona. It’s a beautiful resort with incredible food. I’m not much of a golfer, but this is an epic destination for people that are more serious about the sport. But golf courses also make great destinations for photographers as well with endless landscape compositions.
Here’s a cool view of Antelope Canyon. There are really no bad photos of this place… I think that’s why photographers love it so much! I spent a few hours in here getting waaaaaay too many photos. I still haven’t gone through all of them.
The trek to Burning Man is always an adventure. Before we had our own RV that we store in Reno, I would rent an RV from somewhere around the country and drive in. I think during that week, there are like 50,000 RVs rented and it’s usually cheaper to get them somewhere else and make the journey. I plan it all out so there are some cool photo stops along the way. This one is from Sedona, Arizona.
It’s sort of an obvious idea, but there is nothing wrong with obvious if it works! Anyway, the idea is whenever you have a cool road heading into a vista, why not include the road? Now, after having said that, you do have a few options. You can center the whole thing, but I usually only do that if the backdrop is equally weighted. In this case, since the coolest mountain feature is on the left, I oriented the road heading off a bit to the right to bring some balance to the scene. I believe (but I’m not sure) that this is one of the roads around Sedona, Arizona.
Daily Photo – The Coolest Place in the Phoenix Summer
…was probably this place. It was one of our stops along our incredible Phoenix photo walk. I knew it was gonna be hot, but not THAT hot. It was a welcome relief when the photo walk ended up back in the bar for the little after-photo-walk talk. I think that evening’s shower was about the best I ever had!
Man, I love this video… the tune is so catchy. Sometimes I just play it when I’m cleaning up my studio! 🙂
Daily Photo – Golf Practice in Arizona at Dove Mountain
We had a Very Fun Evening at Dove Mountain in Arizona. We had our party bus with the whole crew on during the USA Photo Walk Tour and we were driving through Arizona. It popped into my mind that, hey, maybe there’s a Ritz-Carlton around here! They were one of our awesome sponsors, so I called up and there was! It’s here at Dove Mountain and an hour later, we pulled up the bus. We opened the door and wine bottles poured out of the bus and we stumbled out, looking like death warmed over. Next thing I knew, the whole staff was there to greet us and shake hands. And then this ranger guy popped out of nowhere with a snake coiled up his arm and beckoned us down to see all his other snakes… it was full-on but so fun! The night finally ended with this beautiful sunset. We were eating dinner right by this golf course and I walked over to get this shot.
If you’re looking to try a fun and easy meditation app, try “One Giant Mind.” A friend recommended this to me and it works great! It’s a fun method that anyone can do, even many of my friends that told me that “can’t” meditate! 🙂
Daily Photo – Burning Rocks in Sedona
I need to spend more time in Sedona! It’s not the most convenient place in the world, but it sure was beautiful. And now that I’m even more into yoga and meditation and stuff than ever, I should get back there and vortex it up! I mention a few days ago how islands often have nice sunsets, but now that I think about it, so does Arizona!
We’re getting into a groove a little bit when it comes to creating and editing videos… be sure to subscribe to the Stuck In Customs YouTube Channel to see all the latest ones!
Daily Photo – Sedona Storm
Wow I almost got stuck in a torrential downpour here! You don’t want to be hiking around when these things hit… the clay on these mountains in Sedona gets super-slippery and it’s a great recipe for going ass-over-teakettle. There’s a little house up there on top of that mountain —don’t know if you can see it or not, but it looks like the universe is about to suck up the house!
In celebration of the new USA Photo Walk Tour, we are releasing the Trey MEGA Pack, which is everything I’ve ever done, all in one pack. There is a special discount code “TREYUSA” to save another $100 — for a total of $300 off the full normal price. So, it’s a great deal!
This package has been our most common request, but it took me years to put it together! Now you can get everything I’ve done here, all at once. It’s a super-convenient way to download everything, all at once. From Tutorials to Presets to eBooks, it comes with an absolute boatload of goodies. Everything is self-paced and perfect for every skill level from Beginners to Intermediate to Advanced. As you’d assume with a package this epic, everything is covered.
Naturally, you get the my Complete HDR Tutorial plus all of the other tutorials including the Lightroom Tutorial, Organize Your Photos, Textures Tutorial, Landscape & Travel Photography series from New Zealand, Midnight In Paris tutorial, and the Art of Photography Tutorial.
Want all the presets at once? I’ve got ya covered there too! You’ll get all the Lightroom Presets up until June 2015 (we do monthly releases), so you’ll end up with about 200 presets. You’ll also get both volumes of the Photomatix Presets.
eBooks? Yes! All of them! The Organize Your Photos eBook, the HDR Tutorial eBook, the Beauty of Ambiguity, 10 Essential Photoshop Skills, 10 Principles of Beautiful Photography, Top 10 HDR Mistakes and How to Fix Them, and Composing the Photo, Special Edition.
If you were to get all that stuff separately, it’s well over $700 USD. But with this super pack all at once, you get it for $399 (if you use the discount code “TreyUSA” for a limited time), which is a savings of over 30%! And, as always, there’s a money-back guarantee if you don’t enjoy everything, so you have nothing to lose!
I know you’ll learn a ton and really enjoy yourself with this stuff! Be sure to tell your friends about it too if you do have a transformative experience… we kind of live on word-of-mouth around here, so that would be amazing!
Would I Recommend a Zero-G Flight
Even after reading the account below, yes!
Daily Photo – The Worst Experience of My Life That I Thought Would Be the Best
I’ve always wanted to go space. From watching Star Trek to the Jetsons to Star Wars, and well, to everything sci-fi, I’ve always planned to go to space! I always knew step one was a zero-G flight to get myself ready for zero-G movement. Well, this was a crash course with total hell. BTW that’s Peter Diamondis in this photo with me. We flew together… and it was utter hell… not the Peter part… the parabolic part.
This plane goes up quite high and does about 12 reverse parabolic dives. This was news to me! I thought the zero-G bit was when the plane was DIVING, equal to gravity, but that’s not how it works at all. It makes “humps” in the air that kind of throw you up in the air (and make you throw up) for about 20 seconds before it makes another dip. The idea is that you are weightless on the humps and 2-3Gs on the dips.
Total Hell.
I have a Really Strong Stomach, and by iteration 8, I was lodged into a wall-belt just heaving my stomach contents into a bag. It was terrible… oh god I’ll never forget. About 1/3 of us were in this same ignoble position…
But, after the flight, I talked to my astronaut friend Ron Garan. He told me not to worry about it… that it is nothing like being in space. It’s the negative G’s combined with the rapid-fire positive G’s that would do the strongest man in… so that made me feel “a little” better.
The Worst Experience of My Life That I Thought Would Be the Best
Here is the Event Date and Time. This thing is kind of a special event where Lisa Bettany, Rick Sammon, Dave Cross, and I will critique some photos on video.
As we march toward opening the doors to TheArcanum.com, you’re invited to participate in this special event just for our community! Through participating in this event our community will get a taste of The Arcanum Experience – learning through constructive critiques, which is just one of the many things that happen inside the hallowed magical doors!
The Arcanum Photo Critique and Make-Over event is a Google+ Hangout On Air, open to the public, scheduled for Monday February 10th at 7pm.
Since you already applied to The Arcanum – we truly hope you’ll submit a photo to be critiqued. If not, no worries at all! Either way, you can watch the live event! 🙂
And if you’re wondering when the doors will officially open for The Arcanum, the answer is as soon as magically possible! We’re doing a test run right now with all the Masters to work out any kinks. Also, we are a bit (!!) overloaded with Apprentice applications, so it will take a while to ramp up. It may be a good opportunity for you to pop over and update your application!
Daily Photo – Horseshoe Bend
This place is amazing, but quite scary. It was very hard for me to be here. I am not personally scared of heights, although I would not say that I’m a big risk-taker. I don’t get super-close to the edge, and if I do, I make sure that there is at least a smaller dropoff so I don’t go all the way to my death quickly.
But the other people here would just walk right up to the edge. They’d run along it, sit there with their legs dangling, and all other sorts of crazy things. I spent most of my mindspace worrying about everyone else, which is certainly not like me. I’m usually in my own world. I think I was perhaps worried because I didn’t actually want to see anyone fall. This was both altruistic and selfish. Naturally, I don’t want to see anyone die like that. But also, I don’t want to see anyone die like that. You know, it would just kind of stick with you.
Well, it was a truly beautiful place. I hate to be so morbid in my description… I would have much preferred not to see anyone else there in a scary position, though.