Oahu Vacation Well, it wasn’t really a vacation. It was work. Hard, wet, slogging work. Don’t let this picture fool you. Okay, you can let it fool you a little bit… This is about the only sun I got the whole trip. 90% of it was me being extremely wet and rather physically and emotionally drained. Things were so wet, in fact, that they declared part of Hawaii a disaster area! I was there for about a week with Tom Anderson, and he was so excited to show me his second home… he had big dreams of fancy-free days, taking photos on sunny beaches… be we had very little of that… However, I did my best to produce a lot of images while there… here’s the first one I wanted to share with you.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog. - Trey Ratcliff | Stuck In Customs

Thank you again for all the comments and feedback - much appreciated and I read them all! A lot of requests come in for my tutorial about how I do these shots - you can find it here: HDR Tutorial

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StuckInCustoms > The Glaciers of the Alps
Getting to the top of these mountains happened just in time, late on a cool, crisp day on one of my first afternoons in Switzerland. I knew things would be beautiful way up here in the upper atmosphere, but I honestly did not expect the streaming confluence of flowing ice. This is always a nice and unexpected aspect of glaciers - how they look like they are flowing and still at the same time.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Final Night of the Space Shuttle I was completely soaked after laying in mosquito-invested waters for an uncomfortably long time. At one point, a concerned French news reporter came up to me and said, "Excuse me, but you're quite covered in bugs." It must have been pretty bad for him to come over and say that... I think perhaps he thought I was dead because I stayed in the same position for so long, trying to zen-focus on the shot. This is the Space Shuttle Atlantis, in case you do not know. It's also the final space shuttle launch, ever. So, it's incredibly special, and I'm happy I got to spend time with the ship on its final night.- Trey RatcliffRead more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Oahu Vacation Well, it wasn’t really a vacation. It was work. Hard, wet, slogging work. Don’t let this picture fool you. Okay, you can let it fool you a little bit… This is about the only sun I got the whole trip. 90% of it was me being extremely wet and rather physically and emotionally drained. Things were so wet, in fact, that they declared part of Hawaii a disaster area! I was there for about a week with Tom Anderson, and he was so excited to show me his second home… he had big dreams of fancy-free days, taking photos on sunny beaches… be we had very little of that… However, I did my best to produce a lot of images while there… here’s the first one I wanted to share with you.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Delicate Ice in Spring - Trey Ratcliff After dinner one evening in Ísafjörður, I drove through a nearby town and up into the mountains. Along the road, I noticed an iced-over river that was beginning to thaw in a few areas. I pulled over, and scrambled down the hill to set up for a shot.I tried this both with and without an ND filter. The ND filter didn’t add anything to the shot except for a lot of pain! The light was low enough where a small aperture could get the feeling of the river through the hole in the ice…- Trey RatcliffRead more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > My Kinda Town If you want to see how I made this (and how you can too!), visit my HDR Tutorial. I hope it gives you some new tricks!I am excited because I upgraded and got the Nikon D2X. This thing is like carrying around a small tank. It's so large that it actually sucks other nearby cameras into it, automatically amalgamating all their megapixel power.I took this at the top of the John Hancock this evening as night fell.It was done with 9 exposures. I figured, why the heck not.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > The Atomic Explosion and Mushroom Fallout at Sunset If you want to see how I made this (and how you can too!), visit my HDR Tutorial. I hope it gives you some new tricks!I think about all the sunsets I miss. I always seem to be out and about somewhere, noticing a great sunset whilst noticing that I am not even close to my camera and tripod. It's just unacceptable!This day and evening I was in Yellowstone alone. I had just seen a grizzly bear and a black bear about 30 minutes before this shot, both of which are pretty rare to see. They went on their way and I was left in the middle of this area with just a few elk meandering a few hundred feet from me. I tried to not get overly "sucked into" the sunset, trying to remember those bears that were lurking about. The ground was pretty marshy here, so I was not in optimal conditions for running from a bear.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > The Long Curvy Road Around Iceland I'm packing now for another summer solstice at 66 degrees north. It'll be a great one!I'm also trying out some new photo bags... people send me stuff to try out all the time. Hehe... I make it clear to all of them that I only review and recommend stuff that I actually use... if I don't like it, I won't rip on it, I just won't mention it. If it turns out to be good, I'll give it a big thumbs up and tell you all about it... so I am about to go through the big ceremonial process of moving all my stuff from one bag to another... you know that process. It's actually kind of fun, to tell you the truth... Also, it's down there in my ethics statement. I only review and recommend stuff I actually use rather than giving you 20 reviews a week. I think that keeps it simple, and also, you aren't forced to read a bunch of reviews that hem and haw about this and that...And when I get to Iceland, I'll be up on this wonderful road again... this gentle curving road that circumnavigates the island... sleeping days and staying up through the white nights... I can't wait!- Trey RatcliffRead more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Another Summer Day in Paris I'm having an amazing time in Paris. As usual, it's off-the-rails perfect. The weather has been remarkable, the sunsets amazing, and the chocolate flows like mana from heaven. I made it over to the Eiffel Tower for a big night of shooting, and arrived there just as the sun was setting. I have a few little special spots I like to visit around the tower that are not full of tourists and the like.This shot looks much more delicate, perhaps, than I did while achieving it. Unfortunately, this was one of those tricky ones where the tripod legs were splayed out like a flattened armadillo. I looked beyond redonkulous while taking it...Read the rest here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Secret Treasures of Beijing These little finds are everywhere! Sometimes, while stumbling around from alleyway to alleyway, I appear right in the middle of these perfect little scenes.It was very close to the National Day, and crews were out freshening-up the city. There were about four Chinese painters that were busy putting a fresh red coat of paint on this perfect little bridge. By chance, they were just finishing up as I approached. This little boat from the painters was pulled up beside the bridge in a wonderful way, so I set up my tripod along the bank for a photo.They all looked at me in a confused way. They had no idea why I would want to take a photo of their little boat and the bridge. I imagine they find this so commonplace as to be hardly worthy of a photo... and it makes me wonder about all the non-photographers (or fans of this site) out there. Perhaps they just go through life and don't even notice anything interesting pretty and nicely composed. What an empty visual life this must be!- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Magical Fog in San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge
I recently drove across the bridge and up this little mountain road to try to find this shot. I started driving up a road I knew well, but it was closed. Closed! So I parked, got out my tripod, and hiked about a mile up this hill to get to this spot. It was a very cool night, but there was some strange inversion happening. Almost anywhere I stood on the side of the hill was a stead hotel-room 72-degrees. And there was zero wind. It was a perfect night, and just when I arrived, the fog really started pouring over the bridge, so I set up for this shot...- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > The Falls of Yellowstone This is a very famous waterfall in Yellowstone National Park. I was there smack dab in the middle of the day, which is just about the worst time to take photos. So be it, Jedi.I got out the old trusty and handy 200-400mm lens to take a shot. It's not that big. It'll fit right in your back pocket. (BTW, see my Nikon 200-400 Review for more).- Trey RatcliffRead more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > An Evening Stroll Around the Cabin I've had a wonderful week here in Montana. I've been lucky enough to be invited to this private conference here in Yellowstone. We get together and talk about science, art, and Libertarianism... It's a very cool and interesting collection of people!A few nights ago, I took a dusk walk around the main cabin. The horses come graze all around the meadow in the evening... I finally convinced one of them to stand still for a bit.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Red Boat in Fjord Before Storm Usually once it gets dark outside, I give it another half hour or so before I go restaurant-hunting. I like experimenting with new food while processing a few photos... It's one of the greatest things... I usually have a table all by myself, and I get quite a large one so I can lay out all my stuff. I order all sorts of quirky foods, and I have a diet that would make Walter from Fringe happy.But this night, there was so much strange ambient light that I decided to shoot for a few more hours. I worked my way up and down the waterside to find interesting sights. In these situations, I usually try to have at least one of my exposures be 30 seconds. That means the other four exposures are 15s, 8s, 4s, and 2s. That makes a good 59 seconds per session. I usually have my earphones on and I keep one finger on the tripod so I can feel the shutter click. I can tell immediately if my settings are off by the vibrations.- Trey RatcliffRead more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Beautiful Disney World at Sunset Hey, you know... I can't stay mad at Disney for too long. I think those issues are just at Downtown Disney.This photo below, from Epcot, is one of the reasons I keep coming back again and again. It's such an amazing place, and Epcot may be my favorite new spot for photography at Disney.This is the "France" area of the World Showcase, which is a huge lake that is circumnavigated by about 10 different countries or so. Each one has a cluster of buildings set in the theme of the country. They are all quite authentic, and the areas are staffed with people from the countries. The Norway area has authentic-looking and -sounding Norwegians. The Germany area is filled with Germans in postcard-German-clothes. The Canada area has people that look and sound like Americans.The afternoon had ripped open a wicked thunderstorm on the whole park. It was subsiding around sunset, so the clouds were swirling about with these wonderful tempestuous formations. I set up to take this shot before moving over to the Japanese area to watch the big fireworks show on the lake. While I was taking these shots, by the way, I had sent my family into one of the pastry shoppes here in the France area to load up on wonderful little morsels to keep us fully loaded during the fireworks show!- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Night Settles In Feung Huang
There is a general poetic peace when it begins to go dark outside and the town comes alight with shopkeepers and villagers come out to turn on the lights. If you look around, you can see them popping on, one at a time, like little fireflies coming out to play for the evening.

This area is no different, and it's made even more magical by the little river that flows through the middle of it all. And then you are faced with all these nice decisions... where to eat? where to drink? where to find an inn for the night?

- Trey Ratcliff

Read more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

Oahu Vacation

Well, it wasn’t really a vacation. It was work. Hard, wet, slogging work. Don’t let this picture fool you. Okay, you can let it fool you a little bit… This is about the only sun I got the whole trip. 90% of it was me being extremely wet and rather physically and emotionally drained. Things were so wet, in fact, that they declared part of Hawaii a disaster area! I was there for about a week with Tom Anderson, and he was so excited to show me his second home… he had big dreams of fancy-free days, taking photos on sunny beaches… be we had very little of that… However, I did my best to produce a lot of images while there… here’s the first one I wanted to share with you.

- Trey Ratcliff

Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.