Sunrise in America Early morning shoots are often coffee-challenging. The photography is fun and invigorating, but it can be a little distracting when half of your simian brain is thinking about warm drinks and food. Usually, these early mornings are a bit too early to get coffee from anyplace that sells the stuff. Sometimes, my hotel room will have some coffee inside, but not in a to-go cup. Besides, I have to wake up so early, I can't imagine getting up an extra 30 minutes before just to have some coffee!This was taken off the Florida coast on a warm summer morning. At this exact moment when the sun breaks the horizon -- well, this is a time when I am not thinking of coffee.- 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 > Wheat Horses This HDR is from a single RAW file, as about 20-30% of my photos are. If you look in the free HDR Tutorial here on the site, you can see page 3 talks a bit about how to do this. It's quite easy!Before, I talked about my desire to try to get off the main highway in Iceland. But when you have cool horses like this lining up along the highway, it's hard to find a reason to get off!I don't always like to use a flash when taking photos of horses because I think it scares the animals. I prefer just to shoot wide-open with natural light and see what I can recover later with the HDR process.In this case, these two horses were playing with one another, weaving their heads and necks together in a little dance. I stood there with my camera, trying not to intrude on their private horse-moment, when they stopped for a quick second in this pose. - Trey Ratcliff Read more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > The Mean Streets of Tokyo Tokyo has amazing action all the time. There is never a good time to sleep or turn off the camera! Every minute I sleep, I feel like I am missing something!This was taken close to midnight on another evening when I was just randomly walking around the downtown streets. It's all a wonderland of lights, colors, people, and sounds. I've noticed there are many kinds of "sensory overload" - and they are all on a sliding scale from good to bad. - Trey Ratcliff Read the rest here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > The Sea and the Sun Even though I'm not an ocean person, I do spend a lot of time photographing them. Maybe as long as there are mountains close by, I feel a little more comfy.The NW area of Iceland is edged with countless fjords. They just go on and on and on. It's also confusing when you are not used to the area. The road goes around the outside of course, and as you edge out onto one peninsula, it circles back into another big loop around the bay. Each loop takes another 30-45 minutes or so! I remember I was trying to get to a certain town, and I knew it was somewhere there along the road. Fjord after fjord passed, and as I rounded yet another peninsula, I was both exasperated and excited that I had to make a big loop around yet another fjord! - Trey Ratcliff Read the rest here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Purple Sunset in Indonesia I promised that I would continue my story about the dead body in Indonesia, so here it is. It doesn't really go with a pretty sunset, but, well, here we go. It's short and not too spectacular, so don't get your hopes up for a good old-fashioned dead-body story.While walking through downtown Jogjakarta with Will the crowds were thick. There were thousands of Indonesians walking around through busy downtown streets. It was an area without cars, but hundreds of bikes and carts darted in and out of the traffic. It was not really a commercial district, but it was somewhat third-world in the types of little shack-like stores that fringed the edges. Food carts rolled around selling hot, steaming mysterious meat-mashes and small ziplocks of coconut juice hung from poles, ready for sale.After walking through a bit, we approached a curb where we saw some poor soul splayed out across the concrete. I've seen thousands of homeless / passed out / drunk / unfortunates splayed out in the street before, but this was different. This guy was dead. You can just tell. People walked around him and certainly regarded him as an empty shell. People would kind of step on or trip on bits here or there. I passed by his legs and didn't quite know what to do. There was no one stopping to help, and I didn't really want to get involved, since I don't speak the language and didn't want to get carted off for questioning/shakedown.So I passed by and Will said, "Do you think that guy was dead?" I nodded and we got the hell outta there. Read more here at stuckincustoms.com.

StuckInCustoms > Auckland Harbor When we were in Auckland last time, we had an amazing photowalk. There were so many people! A lot of us had our tripods as we moved around the city streets creating quite a spectacle. Afterward, we went to a nice little venue and I gave a talk on photography that I hope did not bore people!During the walk, we stopped along the harbor in a few spots. There was a rotating metallic sculpture that grabbed everyone's eye, so we popped over for a quick shot. - Trey Ratcliff Read more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > The Icy Part of the Waterfall This waterfall was enormous! I've never been to Angel Falls in South America, although that is on my list. I know that these places are extremely difficult to photograph. Luckily, for this one, I had a good vantage point at the bottom that let me zoom in.I took this photo in the very early spring, during cherry blossom season in Japan. There is still snow and ice in the highlands, and you can see a small pack of it here behind the waterfall. I also have a "zoomed out" version of this on the review page mentioned above. - Trey Ratcliff Read more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Man Crossing Street I spent a lot of time in this dynamic area of Tokyo. It's sort of the techno-nerd electronic center of the Japanese world. So I felt right at home there with my fellow nerds. But this guy certainly stood out. He was crossing the street and looking extremely Japo-cool. I pulled up my 50mm and waited for the time to feel right before I snapped the photo. Afterward, of course, it is kind of fun to look at little bits of the photo and find out, compositionally, why the photo did indeed feel "right" to take at that moment.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > The Green Pool The northern island of New Zealand has a geothermal area in Rotorua called Wai-o-tapu that is filled with these strange places. One of the best things about these are the names... Various mysterious pits have names like the Devil's Throat, Hell's Gate, and Devil's Cauldron. You don't want to drop your cell phone in any of these. - Trey Ratcliff Read more and see a behind-the-scenes video here at stuckincustoms.com.

StuckInCustoms > Under the Umbrella at Sunset We took this during our fun PhotoWalk in San Clemente. It's a wonderful beach there - not too crowded, a perfect beach, and an idyllic pier. Just throw in a few clouds, and we end up with a perfect sunset!Every 100 feet or so, these thatched-roof umbrellas are spread out. Composing with these and a wide-angle lens is kind of challenging, but fun. I noticed that after I got a wide-angle lens that it opened up a whole new range of compositional complexities. Walking around a scene has to be done with a whole new perspective, since you are able to capture more than a human can see in a single viewing-cone. But, the challenge is kind of fun to compensate for the lens and try to put together something that feels right. - Trey Ratcliff The rest of this entry can be found here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Waterfalls at Midnight I had done a little research about the southern part of Iceland before my trip, but I left enough gaps to be surprised. On this particular night, it was about 65 degrees (18 C), so it was just a tad perfect. The air was wet with moisture from an evening rainstorm, and it was held aloft by the strange weather patterns. When I first saw this waterfall, it was around midnight. By the time I got into this position, it was about 1 AM or so.Once again, I had not seen another human for hours. It was so eerie walking around these amazing places alone. Typically, with something so grandiose, you sort of expect a bunch of tourists to be lurking about. So, alone, it all feels a bit post-apocalyptic. But thanks to a ton of video games, I'm well versed with how to survive in these situations.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > To Another World There are no short days at Disney! They are all long escapades, filled with happiness, crying, sticky fingers, strollers hitting you in the achilles tendons, and scary people that should not really be allowed to the buffet area. - Trey Ratcliff Read the rest here at stuckincustoms.com.

StuckInCustoms > Boat in Mumbai Mumbai and Bombay are the same place. If you say “Mumbai” quickly with a thick Indian accent, you will see what I mean, and understand it why the stiff-upper lipped British just went with “Bombay”. One of the more interesting bits of the city lies along the waterfront. The quay is filled with hundreds of boats going each and every direction. I popped on my 70-200 after a quick visit to the car so I could find some interesting things out in the water.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Five Minutes of Light in Houston When I give talks, I have a rotation of random photos that appear in the background while I talk about all sorts of things. I figure people don’t want to watch me… and a steady stream of photos is more interesting. Anyway, at some point, one of my photos of Houston appears, and I say, “This is about the prettiest you will ever see Houston.” It always gets a laugh… mostly because it’s so painfully true.This is the 2nd or 3rd photo of downtown Houston that I have processed. There is a quick moment between sunset and dusk when the sky can turn any color… this time it turned purple, so I was lucky!- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

StuckInCustoms > Horse in Field In the afternoon, the horses at the ranch where I was staying are let out of the corral to graze in the meadow. The sun gets low, and just before sunset, everything is lit with a very strong light at a low level of incidence.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

Sunrise in America

Early morning shoots are often coffee-challenging. The photography is fun and invigorating, but it can be a little distracting when half of your simian brain is thinking about warm drinks and food. Usually, these early mornings are a bit too early to get coffee from anyplace that sells the stuff. Sometimes, my hotel room will have some coffee inside, but not in a to-go cup. Besides, I have to wake up so early, I can't imagine getting up an extra 30 minutes before just to have some coffee!

This was taken off the Florida coast on a warm summer morning. At this exact moment when the sun breaks the horizon -- well, this is a time when I am not thinking of coffee.

- Trey Ratcliff

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

Sunrise in America

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