Stuck in Customs' photostream Pro User

Someone gave me a hot tip to go see this cool robot area of Tokyo! There’s a place called the Robot Restaurant, and it’s one of the craziest places I have ever been!

It’s basically like Medieval Times, but with robots and girls in bikinis.

Outside the Robot Restaurant, they have all these awesome-looking robots with iPads on their chests. There are people inside, which is kind of a disappointment, but also kind of a relief. Either way, they are pretty awesome!

- Trey Ratcliff

Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

Here I am in that little village of Saiko. I don’t know if it is always relatively empty or just this one day, but hardly anyone was around. I did see this one older gentleman sauntering around, and he happened to saunter right into the frame! A lucky grab! :)

This “look” for this photo is a bit experimental, but I kind of like it. To achieve it (this is Photoshop-heavy-jargon I’m afraid!), you can duplicate the layer then do some extreme sharpening and a black and white conversion using something like Silver Efex Pro (there is a review here on the site). After that, you can change the blend mode to Hard Light… it makes an interesting effect!

- Trey Ratcliff

Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

I’m happy to be back home in Queenstown!

It’s strange to me to come “home” to the kind of place I used to go on vacation. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it. There is a very nice feeling when the airplane approaches this place. If you ever have a chance to fly in here, then you will know what I mean.

Airplane pilots have to go through some kind of special training or planning before an approach here. They have to spiral down and get between the mountains. I don’t know much about it, obviously. But I do know there is a very nice pilot on Air New Zealand that is a frequent reader of the blog! He came up and said hello to me when I was on his plane one day. Hi Captain! :)

- Trey Ratcliff

Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

These trees are huge! I’ve visited these huge redwoods along the coast of California many times, and I don’t think I could ever get used to how gigantic they really are. It’s almost like an alien planet!

The cabin there is one of the many varied rooms at the Glen Oaks. They are all different, but each one is nicely appointed. I’m recommending this place to my friends who are looking for awesome lodgings in the Big Sur area!

- Trey Ratcliff

Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.

It was a great event at Google that day and night! After my tech talk, we stayed up in their skyscraper till dark, drinking and eating and taking photos. Luckily, the office windows aim in directly the right direction out of the Roppongi Towers.

The windows were all crowded with photographers, and it was a great time. Between shots, I got the chance to talk to a lot of enthusiastic Japanese photographers. I even set up a future-photo-date with the great Takahiro-san… and he would take me to one of his secret bridge locations in Tokyo! That photo will be coming up soon…

- Trey Ratcliff

Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.