Epic Iceland I have many things in common with Tom.  One of them is the love of “Epic” scenes.  These mostly come from movies, but it spans many different pursuits.  He’s the only other guy I met that can also quote scenes from Lawrence of Arabia.So, obviously I do like to find epic scenes in the world, and I feel like Iceland is full of them.  Capturing them the right way is another ball of wax, but that is most of the fun.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The Long Road to New Zealand This is one of countless beautiful roads that crisscross New Zealand.  I'm afraid I've forgotten exactly where I was when I took this photo!   I know that is very lame, but I bet people around here can help me pinpoint the area.As far as the camera settings, this is the kind of shot you can get with something called "compression," a method where you use a zoom lens and zoom in quite far.  It takes images in the distance and makes them larger than life.- Trey RatcliffRead more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Horse in Landscape Remember what I said a few days ago about reasons for no stopping for almost every horse photo in Iceland?  Forget I said that.  I don't know what I was talking about.  Go ahead and stop...  I mean, how on earth can you pass this buy?These horses remind me a bit of the sirens in Odysseus, distracting me from my destination...  But, really, that analogy falls apart because I had no destination in mind, so I allow myself plenty of wonderful distractions.- Trey RatcliffRead more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.
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.
The Unknown Land After a while, my boat driver thought I was insane.  We started before the sunrise and kept going, and going, and going, and going... he kept giving me the international head movement for "we really should be returning for a spot of tea," but I kept motioning him further up the river.To me, the river got most interesting when we saw no more people, except for the occasional fisherman that still had remote hut for his family along the river.  I had plenty of battery power, amazing music on my iPod, a full array of snacks, a ton of drinks, and nothing to do for the rest of the day and night... so I was perfectly content just going until our gas tank reached 50%.  And that took a long time... and who would want to stop with views like this around every other turn?- Trey RatcliffRead more, including some exciting news about our YouTube channel, here at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Church in the Fog I was driving along the southern coast of Iceland on the way to Vik, and I started going throw an area of lowlands.  Around midnight or so, the sun was getting pretty low in the west, and it gave the sky a slight pink glow in almost every direction.I shot this one at a 200mm at F/6.7.  I don't often take out my zooms for landscapes, but it does provide a nice compression that gives an unexpected feel to the final photo.  It's really hard to explain in words, but maybe you can sense of this framing in the final result.  It just can't be done with a wide-angle lens, even if I was a lot closer.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Stone Steps in the City How do you guys feel about hyper-manufactured situations like this? I don't always know what to think.  There are a lot of urban areas like this around Beijing where they create little natural-looking areas.  They certainly look cool, and perfect in many ways.  But, perhaps it is a little too perfect.  No, that's not the right way to say it.  I can't quite put my finger on it, but something doesn't feel right about it. It's almost because I can picture the designer deciding to put a tree in a certain spot or the selection of a certain shape of stone in another part.  Maybe if the placement of items was truly accidental -- true randomness --  then it might look more natural.But I see a lot of this in China.  They have communities with giant apartment blocks.  The new ones are all very modern and nice.  And in the middle of them are fountains, small groves of trees, paths, swings, and everything.  There are families out mucking about and enjoying it...  but I wonder if it "feels" as funny to them as it does to me.  I sometimes feel like I'm on a holodeck.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Icelandic Sheepdog Here is another one of these unusual-looking horses from Iceland. When Rebekka took me out to the fjords to go shoot horses, I did not expect that the horses would be nearly so hairy. I was thinking it might have been seasonal because of the cold, but then again, I have very little business determining anything about Icelandic wildlife.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The Tree Alone Against the World There was this interesting tree sitting alone after a morning snow. The snow had melted, but the skies still had these white-out conditions. Those skies normally make for very dull visuals, so I thought this would be a good candidate for textures. I think, by now, you guys know I can’t stand a boring sky in my photos… and since you can’t always have a four-star sunset, maybe it drove me to use the world around me to find textures to re-purpose inside these photos. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll figure out that bit in a while.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

Icelandic Sheepdog


Here is another one of these unusual-looking horses from Iceland. When Rebekka took me out to the fjords to go shoot horses, I did not expect that the horses would be nearly so hairy. I was thinking it might have been seasonal because of the cold, but then again, I have very little business determining anything about Icelandic wildlife.

- 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(1135081103,'',XLarge,'',1024,732);">Icelandic Sheepdog Here is another one of these unusual-looking horses from Iceland. When Rebekka took me out to the fjords to go shoot horses, I did not expect that the horses would be nearly so hairy. I was thinking it might have been seasonal because of the cold, but then again, I have very little business determining anything about Icelandic wildlife.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

Icelandic Sheepdog


Here is another one of these unusual-looking horses from Iceland. When Rebekka took me out to the fjords to go shoot horses, I did not expect that the horses would be nearly so hairy. I was thinking it might have been seasonal because of the cold, but then again, I have very little business determining anything about Icelandic wildlife.

- Trey Ratcliff

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