My First Photo Processed With Trey Ratcliff’s Awesome New Lightroom Preset Package

My First Photo Processed With Trey Ratcliff's Awesome New Lightroom Preset Package

The shot above is of Friday night’s sunset. A great group of Google+ pals, Amy Heiden, Ricardo Lagos, Jonathan Goody, Brian Matiash, Michael Bonocore and my wife Julia Peterson got together to go out and shoot a bus graveyard in Williams, CA. Here’s a group shot that Bonocore made.

This shot is also the first shot I’ve processed using my good pal Trey Ratcliff’s new package of 76 new Lightroom presets. Trey’s presets rock hard and I’d encourage you to go check them out. Trey’s given a ton to the photography community online and this is a great way to support that effort and his generosity while picking up these awesome presets yourself. This is the first time these presets have ever been made available to the public.

Photo Talk Plus, Episode 4, With Special Guest Trey Ratcliff

Last night we recorded a very special episode of Photo Talk Plus with Trey Ratcliff. Thank you to Trey who offered such a heartfelt candid personal interview about both him and his work. Trey is a very humble individual who spends so much more time promoting other photographers than his own art and work. He’s given so much to the Google+ Community and I enjoyed having an opportunity to really focus more directly on him as a person and an artist.

If you missed last night’s show, I really hope you’ll take some time to watch this episode and get to know a little bit more about Trey. Trey is a good friend and this was one of my favorite hangouts I’ve done on Google+ yet.

Thank you to everyone involved with last night’s show including my cohost Lotus Carroll and last night’s panelists Lili Ana Chris Chabot Brian Matiash (thanks for giving away a copy of onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite) and Keith Barrett.

Thanks also to Keith for broadcasting our show as usual on the Vidcast Network and thanks to everyone who participated in the chat room while we broadcasted. You are the community and are the ones that make Google+ such a great place for photographers.

A special thank you also to our show sponsors Drobo and SmugMug

Check them out here at Drobo and SmugMug.

Thank you also to Chee Chew and everyone on the Google Hangouts team for giving us this remarkable new “On Air” feature that allows us to make these videos available here on Google+ and on YouTube.

Join Us TONIGHT for a very special episode of Photo Talk Plus with special Guest Trey Ratcliff, 8PM PST

Trey

Please join Lotus Carroll and myself tonight live for an interview with our very own Trey Ratcliff!!! Tonight’s broadcast will be LIVE at the Vidcast Network and LIVE on my Google+ stream with the new Hangouts On Air feature. Learn more about Trey’s unique photography, outlook on life, and how he has been able to build one of the most successful photography businesses on the planet today with Stuck In Customs.

Tonight’s panelists include Google’s Chris Chabot, Brian Matiash from onOne Software Lili Ana and Vidcast Network’s Keith Barrett.

In addition to tonight’s interview with Trey Ratcliff we’ll also discuss some of the top Google+ photography related stories of the past week including the upcoming Google+ Photography Book being curated by Ivan Makarov as well as the upcoming Google+ Scavenger Hunt curated by Chrysta Rae. We’ll also take questions from the chat room directly for Trey so come prepared to learn more about what makes Trey tick.

One lucky viewer tonight will also win a copy of onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite.

This will be an episode you won’t want to miss.

As always thank you to our +Photo Talk Plus show sponsors SmugMug and Drobo for helping to bring you more great Google+ photography interviews live each week. Check them out here at SmugMug and Drobo.

If you’ve missed our first three episodes you can watch any of them here.

The show is also available as a Podcast now on iTunes.

Do You Buy Photography Advertising?

Trey Ratcliff did a little experiment comparing the return on his advertising in traditional old world media like photography magazines vs. new world media like websites and blogs. His analysis shows a much better payoff for him using photo web sites and blogs to advertise vs. photography magazines.

Do you buy photo related advertising? If so what do you think of Trey’s analysis and where do you think is the best bang for your buck?

Oh and go check out Episode one of our new video show Photo Talk Plus. It’s out now. Sponsored by advertisers who DO get it over at SmugMug and Drobo. And don’t miss episode #2 next Wednesday night at 8pm PST when we’ll have space photographer NASA astronaut Ron Garan on the show.

Robert Scoble Interviewing Trey Ratcliff on His New iPad App “Stuck on Earth”

A few weeks ago I jumped the gun (as I frequently do) and published a review of +Trey Ratcliff‘s awesome new app “Stuck on Earth.” This is a brand spanking new iPad app that is probably the single best app for traveling photographers that exists on the market today. It absolutely blows away anything by the likes of Conde Nast or Lonely Planet or the Travel Channel or any of these other attempts at serious travel apps. This app was built and designed for photographers and best of all it’s absolutely free.

It’s a wonderful tool for you to use in planning a trip and seeing both highly rated flickr geotagged photos as well as user curated lists of some of the best photo spots on the planet. I was one of the contributors to the app and contributed the 50 best secret shots to shoot San Francisco.

Above is a video interview by two of my favorite people in the tech/photographic community +Robert Scoble and +Trey Ratcliff (I’m putting +’s in front of people’s names sometimes now because Google+ is so awesome and I want to link to people’s Google+ accounts so that you will follow them there too). 🙂

Also here is Trey’s announcement on the app on Google+ from yesterday as well as a very good conversation about why he built if for the iPad initially instead of Android (even though some Android users are getting pissed about this — both Trey and I are Android users by the way).

Anyways, if you are an iPad user (I bought one just to get this app) GO GET THIS APP HERE NOW!!!

Stuck on Earth Finally Got Me to Buy an iPad

Stuck on Earth = Pure Awesomeness

Update Note: Folks, this app is NOT out yet. It’s almost out (think early Nov.) but it’s not available for you to download yet. I am one of the lucky few with private early access. This is an early review. I love the app. You will too. But you can’t get it just yet. Hang in there though!

Ok, it happened. This past week I finally broke down and bought an iPad. I’ve been resisting ever since they came out. I’m not sure why, but I have. The wife and kids have wanted one like crazy. My wife was hinting that she wanted one for her birthday and so I went out last week and bought one.

The biggest reason why I wanted to finally buy one though was to try out the latest app by my good friend +Trey Ratcliff, of Stuck in Customs fame, Stuck on Earth.

What is Stuck on Earth you ask? Well, it’s just about the single best tool ever made for the traveling photographer. I’ve got a trip to Death Valley coming up next month (you are coming aren’t you? — details here) and so I thought I’d put it through the paces as far as helping me find awesome things to take photos of in Death Valley — and boy did it come up with some great places for me to shoot.

Using geotag information from Flickr’s most interesting Death Valley photos, Stuck on Earth easily pulled up some of the most breathtaking places to shoot in Death Valley. From each photo I was able to add them to my map for my upcoming trip to be accessed later.

Stuck on Earth = Pure Awesomeness

Why not just use Flickr for this directly you ask?

Well, for one, at the Atomic Inn, where I’ll be staying on this trip, they probably don’t have wifi. In fact, I’m sure that much of Death Valley will not even have internet access even for my cell phone. It won’t matter with Stuck on Earth though. All of my locations will be saved and I’ll be able to access them even offline. Also when I’m on the road shooting the valley, it’s a lot easier to carry an iPad around than a laptop.

Using Flickr geoinformation is just the start for Stuck on Earth though. What I’m even more excited about is the idea of curated lists on the app. I contributed one of my own for the app which is called the top 50 secret photo spots in San Francisco. They are not all so terribly secret (well some of them are), but they are some of the very best spots to shoot the City of San Francisco from coming from a seasoned local’s (that would be me) perspective.

Stuck on Earth = Pure Awesomeness
My 50 Secret Photo Spots that I curated for Stuck on Earth

There are also curated lists like the top 50 waterfalls in the world — or the top 50 bridges in the world. So there are both inspirational curated lists as well as geo city specific curated lists.

By the way, if you have unique knowledge about a special geographical area or photographic subject matter and are willing to share your locations, get in touch with Trey’s Chief Editor Topher Martini.

With curated lists, Stuck on Earth will pull together some of the most amazing photo opportunities on the planet. With Trey’s large following and especially the way he’s positioned this app as a community gift (it’s free and there are not adverts or upsells) alot of people will end up contributing special local knowledge to the app. From a photographer’s perspective, these special map points will be even more invaluable than all of the flickr geodata it’s already pulling in. There’s a lot in there now, but there will be even more in the future.

I think the app will especially be a good tool for photographers looking to explore future travel plans because it will spark so many great ideas in terms of beautiful places to shoot in the world — so it will also be sort of an idea generator for the travelling photographer.

For the casual traveler the app will be very useful as well. The app (with your permission) gets your current geolocational position and can show you lots of great things to shoot right around wherever you are. In Madrid and have an hour to kill before your conference starts and want to see the cool stuff near you to shoot quickly — now there’s an app for that.

In terms of the design, the app is elegant and beautiful, offering you up full sized amazing versions of the various places that it discovers for you. You slide around the app and move easily from area to area as you put together your great new travel plans, both the immediate and the “somedays.” The voiceover work in the app is especially sexy. 😉

Trey launched the app last Friday officially at Launch Live. People really liked it there. It actually won the audience award which is very cool. It’s not coming out for a couple of weeks still though — it should be available at the Apple Store as soon as Apple approves it (likely early November). Also if you want to learn more about the app, be sure to join the flickr group for the app here.

Anyways, I love the app. I’m sure you will too. It’s super slick and I’m glad it finally got me around to joining the iPad revolution. Nice work by Trey and his team at Stuck in Customs and congratulations on what will I’m sure be a runaway hit and one of the best selling iPad apps very shortly.