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Thoughts on randomness from Moscow

Our final Photo Walk of the 80 Stays tour was in Moscow and our theme was randomness. We had a crazy but epic time during our short time in there and on our quick trip to St Petersburg. Randomness and exploration, a fitting way to sum up the whole tour.

Hasselblad X1D - The first Mirrorless Medium-Format camera

A new review! As you may have seen I have been using the new Hasselblad X1D. I took it over to Europe for our #80Stays tour, and it did not disappoint! It's such an incredible machine and it is quickly becoming my primary camera.

My reviews are a bit strange. I’m not really a hardware geek that spazzes out with the specifications. Other sites do that very well. I have a much more holistic and artistic approach to these reviews. I provide oodles and oodles of sample photos. Plus, my reviews are kind of tainted in a way because I do so much post-processing! But hey, I do it unapologetically.

A little bit about this camera

It’s the first medium-format camera that is also mirrorless! This makes it very small and light while still producing absolutely stunning photos with incredible optics at 50 megapixels.

“Medium Format,” very simply means it has a bigger sensor than Full-Frame cameras. Sensors come in different sizes. Like the one on your phone, which is only a small rectangle. Then it gets bigger, generally, as the cameras get bigger. Bigger sensors see more light. But the optics also improve a lot as it is better able to render the direction of the light. As for the “Mirrorless” bit, that simply means the camera is a lot smaller because it doesn’t have one of those mirrors inside at 45 degrees that flips around. The light lands directly on the sensor and the image you see through the viewfinder is digital.

Head on over to read my full review and to see some of the incredible images the Hasselblad produced!

A collection of my Favorite Things

Recently I've switched over to using Kit.com to organise all of my favorite things. There's all kinds of goodies in there... books, speakers, cameras, lenses and more. I update the collections every few months with my latest discoveries. So head on over and check it out, you may find something you can't live without!

A Journey with the Ritz-Carlton

While in Barcelona, I sat down with the Ritz-Carlton team to talk about how these photo tours began, why we chose the cities in Europe, my inspirations and a whole lot more. If you're interested, pop over to the Ritz-Carlton site and have a quick read. :)

Feelin' GrooveSalad - A Spotify Playlist

I'm just going to say it, Spotify is awesome. I have my whole house connected so the whole family can listen to my party beats whenever they like. I also spend a lot of time curating specific playlists for specific moods, one of my favorites is Feelin' GrooveSalad which I listen to when I'm deep into post processing. Listen and enjoy!

StuckInCustoms.com is a personal blog where Trey puts up a new unique photo every day and writes about the art, the technology, and the story of the adventures. Actually, this is Trey writing about this in third person. Both Trey and I appreciate your support very much!

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It's the middle of winter here in New Zealand, so here's some snowy photos from around Queenstown :)

Cloud Formations

Here's a sunset from about a week ago taken from my quad above my house. After it was taken the clouds went crazy! The whole valley filled with fog, I could barely see my house.

Glowing lights of Coronet Peak

This is kind of a crazy photo, eh? In a lot of ways, I think it is kind of a crappy photo, but in another way, it's sort of an abstract. I was going back and forth between how to process this photo, and I finally decided on this other-worldly look. The whole thing reminds me of something sci-fi in a way… the idea of skiing at night is pretty awesome. I can see this lit-up ski field atop Coronet Peak from my home down at the bottom of the mountain.

Following the stream

Here is a view from just out of Queenstown, I did a road trip to a remote part of the Mackenzie Basin on the South Island here... beautiful spots everywhere. I got out of the bathroom to "commune with nature" and saw this. After communion, I went to go back to get my camera.

A Starry Morning Atop The Remarkables

Was it cold here? Yes, oh yes. I was up here for something called “World Social Media Day” which sounds like a fairly self-congratulatory idea. I don't know who thought up this day, but probably a bunch of Social Media people who got together and said, “Hey, we're pretty awesome, let's have a day all about US!” haha… honestly, that is probably the way it narcissistically went down. Anyway, they contacted me in Queenstown and asked if I wanted to go participate and freeze my ass off up here, and I said, “Hey sure sounds like fun I don't like sleeping in any way.”

Back to Queenstown after 25 hours

After a whirlwind 24 hours in Auckland, I was happy to be back in Queenstown. That's the Crown Range and Arrowtown on the left and the Remarkables and Queenstown on the right. I finished while on the plane... this is a panorama made from 4 different quadcopter shots and edited in Aurora HDR. Yes, Windows version soon!

On Top of The World in New Zealand

There are so many incredible mountains here in the Southern Alps around Queenstown. I think this one is Mount Alfred and it's quite majestic! You can climb up it without too much trouble (well, there's no cliffs or anything), but that may take you 3-4 hours. In this case, we decided to fly up here with Over the Top Helicopters!

The land of the Long White Cloud

How beautiful were the Remarkables and the Long White Cloud of New Zealand the other day? Quite incredible! This is a panorama made of several different photos.