In The Sun I was working on some photos from Argentina (one from yesterday you might have noticed, and this was in the batch. Most of my Argentina shots were of rugged landscapes… so I thought maybe you might something a little less rugged here… :)- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The Cool Fresh Water This is maybe some of the freshest water I’ve ever had! It was so icy cold, it was like a blast of frigid freshness into my mouth… I got in the habit of not filling up my water bottle until I visited this glacial lake… I was here for about three days… just relaxing, taking photos, and camping… it was very nice!- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Hiking Around Milford I went around a bend in Milford and was greeted with these strange lost-world type trees. You can see the famous Mitre Peak there on the right. There is a wide array of lush vegetation around here because of the constant moisture. There’s even a surplus of moisture here because of a huge waterfall that is right behind me, coating everything in a fine mist all day long.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Sitting in the BreezeThis is the other area of Amateras where we spent most of our time. We would make drinks and then relax outside and read books in the breeze. There is that warm ocean breeze that is not too cold or two hot. In the evenings, it did get a little cool, but it was still nice to sit out here and read books. I finished off two while I was here. They were both about time. One was called “The End of Time” by Julian Barbour — quite a nice book about physics. The other was called “The Fabric of Reality” which puts a different take on the whole thing…- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the entire post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The Secret Crystal Lake
This remote lake was so icy cold.  You would think it's about 33 degrees or something, right?  It felt like absolute zero.  I dropped a little piece of my tripod in here and my hand almost froze off trying to retrieve it.In the distance you can see where the glacier comes into contact with the glassy lake; it gives a sense of the epic scale here.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Once You're Dead, it's Too Late I don't know why I enjoy visiting cemeteries so much.  They are great motivators for me, really... to get out there and start doin' stuff.I try not to let things I really want to do go by the wayside, but some things can't be controlled, I assume.  I certainly go through life with a no-fear attitude, and I guess I shouldn't expect everyone around me to be exactly the same...Anyway, maybe cemeteries only make me think this way about stuff, especially desolate, remote cemeteries like this one in the cold windy plains of southern Iceland.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The Dock to Forever One of the advantages of going down all the side roads is that you get to find cool places!  After leaving Nelson on the South Island, we found a little lake on the map that looked about perfect.  After a few hours of meandering, we discovered this place was almost completely empty (just like every place else on the South Island!).  Even better, there was a perfect little dock jutting out into the lake.I first took a bunch of shots with my 14-24mm lens...  but it was not really getting the dock with the distant valley in the right way.  So, I put on my 70-200mm, zoomed in almost all the way, then backed up quite a bit to get the compression effect of the valley.  Remind me to post the other version someday so you can see the comparison!  I haven't processed it yet -- but it is in my "Pile to Process" -- which is now 22,000 strong.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
The River Runs Through the Andes Getting to this position was not as long a hike as the others around Patagonia, but it was no cakewalk! It was one of those strange river-rock strewn areas where the rocks seemed to be the perfect size for spraining your ankles. I had the tripod extended to act like a walking stick, although it's not the most handy walking stick with a giant Nikon on one end of it!- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.
I've Made it to the Edge of the World This was shot in the final hours of daylight, near the southern tip of Argentina and the edge of Chile, just a glacier's throw from Antarctica.In the morning, we woke up at 4:30 AM in -7 degree cold. I hardly slept 30 minutes the whole night. I was in a tiny 2-man tent with Yuri. The noxious fumes of our tiny prison reminded me, if you will, of the inside of a tauntaun that had spent its life consuming cognac and cigarettes. Furthermore, his snore had the sonorous bass and carrying power of a humpback whale with none of the beauty.I started on one edge of these rugged peaks and moved around to this side, to get the view from the glacial lake. The spiked mountains there are Cerro Torre, and I was very lucky to see them without cloud cover. I understand they are covered up 90% of the time, so to have crystal clear air was fortunate. The glacier there, which presents on the right but really goes back behind many more mountains, is called "glacier grande".I did a lot of other things this day too, including a 45-minute 1500-foot ascent up an icy trail that was not really a trail at all. Dima and Vulva (Vulva is one of the other Russian gentleman who joined us on the trip -- it's hard to pronounce with a strange V-W sound, but he seemed to respond when I called him "Vulva") went up the mountain with me in the pitch black, using only headlamps. I'll have more on that story later because it was pretty sketchy. But, alas, we were able to see Fitz Roy as the sun turned the tips pink. After that, we began the long additional 10km hike that brought us to this location. I stayed here watching icebergs float by until the last morsels of dusk remained.- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

In The Sun


I was working on some photos from Argentina (one from yesterday you might have noticed, and this was in the batch. Most of my Argentina shots were of rugged landscapes… so I thought maybe you might something a little less rugged here… :)

- 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(2362750457,'',XLarge,'',1024,703);">In The Sun I was working on some photos from Argentina (one from yesterday you might have noticed, and this was in the batch. Most of my Argentina shots were of rugged landscapes… so I thought maybe you might something a little less rugged here… :)- Trey RatcliffClick here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

In The Sun


I was working on some photos from Argentina (one from yesterday you might have noticed, and this was in the batch. Most of my Argentina shots were of rugged landscapes… so I thought maybe you might something a little less rugged here… :)

- Trey Ratcliff

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