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The Surf in LA as Night Passes There's this moment in California when the sun hits the horizon that I am quite sure most of the natives take for granted. The gradation of sky from the burning sun to the deep blues can only be really appreciated if you swing your head around and purge your short-term memory. The effect is not dissimilar to the optical illusion of the giant full moon on some evenings, seemingly magnified by our inability to establish a frame of reference. I think something along those lines happens with color as the sun dips. You can see this from space, as the sudden band from light to dark rips around the earth -- that same viewing cone can be seen from anywhere on the surface, and it can be best noticed in places like LA, with the nearly infinite horizon.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Cartier on the Champs-Élysées at Christmas I was working on this photo this evening with a friend to show him some of the techniques that have evolved since HDR started getting popular. I find my methodology changes and evolves about every two months or so. I look back at my old stuff in horror!Ah yes… the wet streets of Paris here… Seems like an idyllic place for this little store called Cartier, eh?- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The Beating Hearts of the Buddhas The morning fog coming off the top of the jungle trees was not like anything I had seen before. There was just enough morning light to give everything a twilight blue and paint the mountains in the distance a deeper color.I tried something a little bit different with this photo. I was holding two flashlights to help me climb the temple in the morning. I think I got there about 5:30 AM when it was still pitch black, so the flashlights helped me find the right footholds and whatnot. Anyway, this was an extremely long exposure, so I used some of that time to "paint" the inside of the bell cages with the beams of my flashlights. Each of those bell cages held a solitary outward-facing Buddha. I'm glad I was there alone, because I'm sure I looked like a loon running around shining the flashlights in patterns to illuminate the Buddhas inside.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The Caged Buddhas Look Outward Towards the Sunrise 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!Each of these "bells" is really a stone cage that houses a Buddha statue that is seated, facing outwards. At this time in the morning, you can take little flashlights and peer inside the cages. It's all very eerie and fun...In the distance, you can see a few volcanoes poking through the mist.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The Batmobile Everyone likes the Batmobile yes? It's especially cool when you see one on the side of the road in Texas that some comic-book redneck has souped up to be something that is on the edge of street-legal. I jumped out quick to grab a shot before the owner could come out and hit me with some sort of a 2x4, which I only assumed me might be carrying. Actually, you never know... around Austin it's just as likely to be a doctor or lawyer (assuming one of those two to be an honorable, upstanding profession!(also notice the nice only-in-Texas trailer hitch on the back)- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
A Votive in the Dark Cathedral I love a scary cathedral. They can put you in such a melancholy and gloomy mood if you want them too. You can feel the overbearing saints from above judging your moves, and giving you a few bonus points in the big game if you light one of the votives. In a scientific study, it was proven than a votive makes a prayer 35% more likely to be granted.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
On the Road to Somewhere After an accident on an ATV, I was stuck on this road for a long time while waiting for rescue. Luckily, the camera and tripod were uninjured and the time I was waiting for happened to be sunset. There are worse things in life than this!- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Puzzling Over Beauty I was captivated by this scene for some reason, and I spent a good deal of time thinking of how best to shoot it. On the final day of my trip there to Glacier National Park, I decided on this treatment. There are many interesting things to me here, and you can probably be thankful you were not beside me to hear me go off on a theoretic (a new Neal Stephenson word). We enjoy beauty and puzzle over beauty at the same time. In a world of entropy, it is calming to take beauty, break it apart into what makes it so, and then piece it back together again to bring order to the chaos. But, I could not bring myself to work on the puzzle at all. I just drank in everything I was there to be with for the moment. I thought a little about the nature of wanting to make a puzzle, just to solve it, a notion that is meta-puzzling in itself.Other guests that come into this view no doubt sit down and work on the puzzle, possibly thinking they could finish it, but also with a sneaking suspicion that they are just putting a few pieces together for the next guest that comes to visit. It seemed to be sort of an altruistic long-term battle against entropy.So I chose not to mess with the puzzle, and simply to focus on the beauty of things as I held them in my mind’s eye. Puzzles tend to work themselves out on their own, which is a comforting thought, I suppose.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The One Sent Me to the Northern Rockies to Get this Sunset Photo for The Machine I tip my hat to the great Kevin Kelly, who always seems to be surfing on the same wave, giving me hang-ten signs via his polemics. In case you don’t know who Kelly is, watch one of his great speeches at TED right here.The One is already extending itself with me. I am totally comfortable with the fact that I was a human that used technology to extend myself, which I still do to ever increasing degrees. All the while, I have felt this unexpected coalition would flip and The One would start using me to feed The Machine compelling content… I just didn’t know when it would happen.But you know that feeling when you have food poisoning, and you just KNOW you’re going to vomit later, so you might as well be tough and make it happen now? I’m certainly at that point with this daily blog at www.stuckincustoms.com, where I feel wonderfully compelled to go gather meaningful content to be added to The Machine.I push the theory forward a bit more and separate The One and The Machine into sort of a "soul" and a "body". The One is an imperfect symphony of the thoughts and desires of everyone on the net, and The Machine is the guts that keep track of all the goodies. The One is right brained and The Machine is left brained, but I am out there, working for both, as a willing agent.I have written pages more about this, and in the very likely case that this is hopelessly confusing to you, I’ll spare you the details! No worries… just keep coming back every day for another photo, served up fresh to give you a new view of the world!- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

The Batmobile


Everyone likes the Batmobile yes? It's especially cool when you see one on the side of the road in Texas that some comic-book redneck has souped up to be something that is on the edge of street-legal. I jumped out quick to grab a shot before the owner could come out and hit me with some sort of a 2x4, which I only assumed me might be carrying. Actually, you never know... around Austin it's just as likely to be a doctor or lawyer (assuming one of those two to be an honorable, upstanding profession!

(also notice the nice only-in-Texas trailer hitch on the back)

- Trey Ratcliff

Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog." href="javascript:openLB(742621880,'',XLarge,'',1024,760);">The Batmobile Everyone likes the Batmobile yes? It's especially cool when you see one on the side of the road in Texas that some comic-book redneck has souped up to be something that is on the edge of street-legal. I jumped out quick to grab a shot before the owner could come out and hit me with some sort of a 2x4, which I only assumed me might be carrying. Actually, you never know... around Austin it's just as likely to be a doctor or lawyer (assuming one of those two to be an honorable, upstanding profession!(also notice the nice only-in-Texas trailer hitch on the back)- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

The Batmobile


Everyone likes the Batmobile yes? It's especially cool when you see one on the side of the road in Texas that some comic-book redneck has souped up to be something that is on the edge of street-legal. I jumped out quick to grab a shot before the owner could come out and hit me with some sort of a 2x4, which I only assumed me might be carrying. Actually, you never know... around Austin it's just as likely to be a doctor or lawyer (assuming one of those two to be an honorable, upstanding profession!

(also notice the nice only-in-Texas trailer hitch on the back)

- Trey Ratcliff

Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
See photo in original gallery.
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