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If you’re a Stuck In Customs Passport Member, today you get a super-cool travel tip video from Kyoto!
Here’s a few of my favorite photos from that area for you! 🙂
I hope you’ve been enjoying these RATHER high-quality videos we’ve been making recently. I really wanted to thank the team for making it all happen. Here are more tips, tricks, and mind-vitamins from Japan… this time, Kyoto!
I don’t actually like this place, so I am not sure why I am posting a photo. Well, I guess it is to honor how awesome this owl looks! When Ethan and I were in Tokyo, we decided to go to an “Owl Cafe.” There are all sorts of cafes all over the city where you can dine with all sorts of animals. It took us forever to find this place, and we had to walk up about six flights of some pretty sketchy stairs. We were instructed to wait outside until our “seating time.” We stood out there looking at a bunch of other Japanese owl-seekers, whom all seemed pretty excited.
Finally, the door opened and we were ushered in. It wasn’t a cafe at all unless you consider humans feeding owls the goopy entrails of mice to be a cafe. We each got a little apple juice carton like we were in kindergarten. There was a small green circle sticker on it. They instructed us to take the green circle sticker and put it on the wall to signify our favorite owl. I voted for this one, which already had about 500 stickers… but there was this one really ugly owl that was not even close to symmetrical. It had only three stickers. It was both super sad, and I was wondering what three crazy people would vote for that owl.
Anyway, I don’t recommend going to an owl cafe… I thought the owls would be happier or get to fly around some big awesome owl Disneyland or something, but I was wrong.
In the spirit of today’s post about Japan, here’s a video I made about F-Stop when I was in Okinawa. BTW, Okinawa is ALMOST like a different country than Japan… many different customs, food, drinks, and even weather. Also, people in Okinawa are some of the longest-lived people in the world.
Now, this may have NO interest to you at all… because it’s not even about photography… it’s about the creation process of a book. My new book, actually… so, today, for you Passport members, you get to see my towards the end-cycle of a random creative endeavor!
And now for something COMPLETELY different. I’m always trying new things… I think this is very important to keep the brain plastic and always learning. I’ve never written a book of this nature before, so here is some of the behind-the-scenes stuff of the things I was working through with the book. Enjoy!
If you’re a Passport member then today you get one of the coolest videos I’ve ever made! It took about a week to make this, shooting all over Tokyo, and I hope you enjoy it!
Here’s a special treat for you! You get to follow me around Tokyo for a while and find out more about my mission there, creating order from the chaos!
Here’s one of the photos we’ll be releasing in Series 2 of the fine art collection. It’s one of my favorites of Tokyo because you can’t really tell it’s Tokyo!
If you’re a Passport Member then today you get to see about a 10 minute video of my time here in Shirakawa-go, Japan. I talk about the shots I’m trying to get, my travel pains, my travel pleasures, and other various tips and tricks. I hope you enjoy!
This was a last-second idea to make this video in Shirakawa-go, Japan. I was having so much fun… I was totally alone, and then I thought, hey, why not bring the Passport members along with me on this little adventure! Anyway, here ya go… a lot of stream of consciousness in here, but I hope you like it! 🙂
Here’s my overall favorite photo from this area! If you watched the Passport video, then you’ll have a bit of perspective on what went into the shot.
Below is the highlight video from our photo walk in Moscow… it was a great way to end the event. If you look closely, there were two undercover marines following me for protection.
Here’s a fun video that shows a boat I was living on for about a week with some friends down in the fjordlands of New Zealand. What a great time we all had! I also recommend this a fun guy trip to anyone. I think everyone pitched in around $800 bucks or so. You get a captain and a chef and basically an unlimited week of freedom!
We were all pretty tired by the time we made it to the last stop in our 10-country tour of Europe a few years ago. But there’s something about being a new city that gives me a little boost of energy! So I tried to use every possible calorie left in my body to see as much as I could… this is the view from one of the bridges as you approach the Red Square.
If you’re a Passport Member, you’ll see a little video on how I make these photos below. It’s a simple trick. Well, kinda simple. And, this trick doesn’t always work, so I show a good workaround!
By the way, if you want to know more about the Fine Art series, visit www.TreyRatcliff.com.
Some of these photos below are newly printed and on display in downtown Queenstown at SLOW. Stop by and have a look!
I don’t get a chance to see all my art hangings, but whenever I do, I often set up to take a photo of the photo. I think it’s interesting to share how people place these in their living or working areas. They read much differently when they are huge in large format. For some reason, even though I think I am above a mediocre photographer, I can never quite capture a photo of the photo, so I need to do a little photoshop action to recreate the scene!
And here’s one of my favorite photos (now sold out) hanging in Sir Michael Hill’s home.
Be sure to check out my Kit.com and see the section on books! I wanted to recommend, once again, “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan. Of all the people I recommend it to, 100% of people come back to me with very interesting thoughts!
The 2019 Version of Photoshop has a few new features. I like to play with all this stuff just to keep my brain a bit “plastic” and always trying new things. Most of the features in Photoshop are not that useful to me, but these new content-aware options are pretty slick! Check ’em out!
Here’s one of my new favorite kind of drone photos: a photo of a city where you can’t see the skyline. I like this because you can’t quite work out what city it is. I notice when people look at my portfolio, they are always quite ready to guess (or know) what city it is. Actually, I’d probably be the same way… but now I find it interesting to purposefully confuse people.
I recently visited an amazing place in Fiji called Laucala Island. I’m old friends with the General Manager there and I primarily went there to take photos. But, while there, we decided to add a video to the mix. If you’re a Passport Member, you’ll hear more about the client work agreement that went into this and see how I edit the video. I’ve gone back-and-forth with their marketing team a few times, so I’m trying to make everything perfect for them, being an over-deliver kinda guy like I am!
If you’re a Passport member you also get full access to my all-new Quadcopter tutorial that will hopefully save you countless weeks of trouble, as you learn from all the mistakes I have made! There is a great section at the end about editing video too that I think you’ll enjoy.
(For everyone else, the tutorial is 50% off in our store today…)
I used Screenflow Pro to do all the editing for this video, even though I actually recommend Final Cut or Premiere for more serious videos. Screenflow was just barely strong enough to do all the heavy lifting for this one. Anyway, in this video, you’ll see how I chose to edit and re-organize this video based on client feedback.
I found this place by accident when I was arriving into Venice and trying to find my digs for the Biennale. I now know my way around the confusing town, but it’s really kind of a drain when you are dragging a big bag all around the city with you. Most of the effort is getting up and down over dozens of bridges… and there is always a sinking feeling that you’re going completely the wrong direction and will have to go back over that same bridge again!
…is all about the new Luminar Libraries. You’ll see me poke around and get a little bit lost as I work on three different portraits using the new Festival Presets. But it all turns out good in the end! Remember, you can unlock over 100 videos if you’re a Passport Member!
Here are three different portrait shots. Each one is unique, and I gave each one a slightly different treatment. You’ll also hear about the importance of always trying new tools to keep your mind fresh!
Today’s photo is a good example of taking a single photo and slicing and dicing it different ways. This was originally (and, I suppose, still is) a vertical photo that followed the river further down off the screen. It was a fine photo in itself, but so is the top 40%, I decided. Sure, it’s not full frame and it’s lower resolution, but who cares? Often times, if you get a good photo, don’t be afraid to slice and dice it different ways!
