Today I had a great day at NASA. I've come back to the space coast in Florida to see the space shuttle Endeavor blast off, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Around noon, I was invited out with a group of other Twitter peeps to see the RRS Rollback event. This is the slow-motion but exciting time when they peel away to the Rotating Service Structure to reveal the shuttle. It was so awesome that I almost forgot to send a tweet.
Read more here a stuckincustoms.com.
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Workshop review from Jim Caldwell
At the Florida workshop, a nice gentleman named Jim Caldwell came up to interview me on camera during the first lunch break. He was a heck of a nice guy, and today he sent me this HDR workshop review that he just released. Thanks Jim!
First Nikon D3S Photo
I'm still writing my Nikon D3S Review, so get ready for that. I think I'll give the first look to people that subscribe to the newsletter ( www.stuckincustoms.com/newsletter/ ). So, far, I'm very impressed. In prepping for the event, below is an HDR photo I took yesterday with the new camera.
Daily Photo - The Shuttle in Spacedock
I finally got to see the Space Shuttle! It's one of those things a young boy always dreams of seeing, don't you know? I'm still waiting on that phone call from NASA where they invite me to see one blast off. I'd love to do a creative shot there...
This was shot in the new Air and Space Museum on DC. Yes, not that old one that I used to think was cool when I was a kid. This is a new and improved center that is completely unbelievable. I had a small argument with a security guard that would not let me take my tripod. He said I needed a "blue card". I asked how to get that and he said the only person that could possibly give it to me was probably at home. There were a number of bureaucracies where I could have filed a series of complaints, but only if such complaints were filled out in a way as pre-approved by other bureaucracies. I did send out a self-serving Tweet to @Smithsonian asking them for special dispensation, since I one of my photographs had hung in the Smithsonian. They did indeed respond, but one day late. So, I'll still keep @Smithsonian on one of my Five Twitter Lists.
So, I was forced to take my HDR shots with a hand-held pose. How barbaric and depressing. I would try to wedge myself up against a beam or a foreigner when possible, but that rarely works out as good as a tripod. Those things are never placed in the right compositional spots, sadly.
But, I did have the Nikon D3S as a backup, and I fired this one off. It was a 4-exposure HDR from -2 to +1. ISO 400, 23mm, f/6.7 and 1/6 second shutter speed. The +2 exposure was too blurry, and I got most of the light I needed out of the +1 anyway.
from the blog www.stuckincustoms.com
Tags: space shuttle spaceshuttle airandspacemuseum air museum smithsonian stuckincustoms trey ratcliff stuck customs blog photography hdr high dynamic range digital imaging travelblog Nikon d3s color national nasm institute aircraft spacecraft travel north America united states usa east coast Washington dc aviation spaceflight science architecture design engineering technology exploration rocket nasa sts orbiter vehicle ov astronaut plane spaceplane orbital propulsion hangar flag exhibit spacedock dock january 2010
On the day before the launch, I was ushered out a few football fields away from the shuttle. It was surreal being so close, even though I wanted to be closer...closer...closer.... but the 28-300 (See the Nikon 28-300 Review) was plenty lens enough to get in tight so you can see all the details of the shuttle and the launch facility skunkworks...
See all my NASA shots here...
- Trey Ratcliff
Read more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.
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So, when I took this, I was using two different cameras. The first one was my D3X with the 28-300mm lens on a tripod, and that is how I got this one. It’s an HDR from a single RAW.
Not long after this, the buffer filled up and it started to shoot slowly, so I went to my second camera around my neck, the D3S with a 50mm prime. And I got this shot.
- Trey Ratcliff
Read the rest of this entry here at the Stuck in Customs blog.
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I was in the Tweetup tent doing something terribly important but completely inscrutable when Stu Maschwitz came in and told me that the storm clouds were breaking upon our shores. So I got my little rig and went outside to see the matter.
We get these kind of huge powerful summer clouds in Texas too. The kind that roll in on a too-hot day and you have a feeling that something powerful is a-comin'. You tie down the cows and take the favorite sheep down to the basement because it's gonna be a long night...
The sun darted in and out of the clouds, and I grabbed it just as it peeked through a small hole it tore in the thunderhead.
- Trey Ratcliff
Read more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.
Tags: Cape Canaveral Cocoa Beach Florida NASA stuckincustoms treyratcliff stuck customs stuckincustoms.com trey ratcliff travel blog travelblog hdr tutorial hdrtutorial imaging photography digital high dynamic range processing world north America united states usa headland Brevard county cape kennedy space coast ksc kennedy space center space astronaut shuttle 321 ccafs space shuttle launch vehicle spaceflight manned missions tweetup event stu maschwitz clouds storm summer humid violent turbulent weather april 2011 Nikon d3x