Another shot of St. Annes pier – one of my all time favourite structures – taken a few weeks ago while wandering around the Fylde coast with Simon Jenkins.

Here's another shot from our recent trip to Jura, taken from the Jetty near the Jura Hotel. As you'll see, rather than crop to 16x9 I extended this one, using Content Aware Scale to stretch the area of the image to the left of the boat. It's not a feature I use very often, but I think it worked well for this image, i.e. the 16x9 format increases the sense of scale.

As always, let me know what you think.

I'm currently sat waiting for a train at Glasgow station, on my way home to Blackpool, but at 5.30 this morning I was on Jura photographing a very beautiful sunrise.

This is my first shot from my three day trip to the Isle of Jura, taken from the Jetty just across the way from the Jura Lodge. Today's my last day on the Island, and we have a fairly busy schedule, so I'll write more when I head back to Blackpool at the weekend.

In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this one.

There are quite a few wrecked and abandoned boats in the Wyre estuary near Fleetwood, and I've been photographing them since 2006. In fact, the first shot I blogged was also this boat, but it was in much better condition then. The last seven years have clearly taken their toll.

I've spent most of this week talking about black and white photography, particularly in terms of the launch of our new assignments-based course. As I mentioned, we scheduled two occurrences of the course: May and June. May sold out a couple of days ago, and there are only a handful of places left in June, so we're really pleased with how well it's been received.

So, enough of black and white photography for a while: time for something a bit more colourful.

This one was taken at the same time as the one below, but I didn't post it at the time because they were both processed in much the same way.

Today though I thought I'd try something a bit different, so started by changing the white balance to fluorescent and took it from there.

As always, let me know what you think.

I leave for Dubai today, for GPP 2013, so thought it was fitting that I posted another shot from my trip in November. I won't be shooting from this location during the coming trip, but I'm hoping to get some equally good shots. I'm also really looking forward to hooking up with old friends, meeting some new ones, and spending time in a warm climate - it's been a long, cold winter here in the UK :)

I've been back from Dubai for almost a month now, but try as I might I can't say I'm enjoying the weather, it's wet, bone-chillingly windy, and right now I'd much rather be laying in the warm desert sand :-)

A shot of 13 of my students, taken earlier today during my Landscape Photography workshop at this year's GPP Fotoweekend event. It was taken about 20 minutes before sundown, just after we'd been shooting some other silhouettes, one of which I'll post at some point over the next few days.

This is the last shot I'll be blogging from the UK for a while as I leave for Dubai on Monday morning and won't be back until the 11th of next month. It's going to be a fairly hectic trip: I'm spending two days shooting for Sony prior to launching the SLT-A99 at a press conference on the 6th, I have a one-to-one student for a couple of days, and I'll running three of my favourite workshops at GPP's Fotoweekend event (two of which have now sold out). So, lots to do, but I'm really looking forward to the trip.

As for this one, it's a shot of Rhowan, taken with the Sony SLT-A99 up at Fleetwood beach last weekend.

This is the first of what I'm sure will be loads of images shot with the new Sony SLT-A99, Sony's new full-frame SLT camera. I'm helping to launch the A99 in Dubai next month, in conjunction with Sony Middle East.

I've only had the camera since I got back from Bulgaria, so it's early days in terms of making any concrete statements about its usability, IQ and so on, but I can say that I'm extremely impressed so far. I'll be posting a much more comprehensive review on our new blog at some point soon but, if you have any questions about it in the meanwhile, feel free to ask. I can't promise to be able to answer them - I'm still working my way through the manual - but I'd be happy to try.

As for this image: it's a shot of Tabby, taken on Fleetwood beach yesterday afternoon.

This was taken back in March during my Shoot the City workshop at GPP 2012.

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5.45pm on 5/3/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 50mm f/11 20s aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

I've posted quite a lot of images of Blackpool's Central Pier, some of which are quite similar to this one, but it's a structure I find myself returning to again and again.

I'm currently back in the UK – to run some one-to-one training sessions, a Creating Dramatic Images workshop, and photograph a wedding – all of which starts at the end of next week. I've also got a long list of things to get through this week, but managed to head out for a few hours with Andrew Thatcher. We started out in Blackpool, then went down to St. Annes, and finished up in Fleetwood. I shot a range of stuff, and have another three, maybe four shots I'll be posting, but thought I'd start with this one as it's the most unusual of the four.

It was taken using a Lee Big Stopper (a 10 stop ND filter) – hence the 15s exposure – and while I'm not 100% happy with it I did think it was worth posting. Let me know what you think.

This is the first of two shots I'll be posting taken during my recent GPP Landscape Photography workshop in the desert near Dubai. Of the two I definitely prefer the one I'll be posting tomorrow, but I like the minimalism of this one too.

This is the first of two shots taken during a trip to Adu Dhabi with my good friend Catalin Marin, just before the start of this year's GPP event. And if you're unsure about his pose, and what it signifies, check back tomorrow when I'll post another shot that should clarify things :)

I've been posting a lot of images from my recent trips to Dubai and Oman but still have a few left over from our Photo Tour to the Venice Carnival, including this one: the first of two shots I'll be posting taken in the Nason Moretti showroom on the island of Murano.

Though this image has nothing whatsoever to do with the Venice Carnival it is one of my favourites from the trip. It was taken on a vaporetto (waterbus) and is a grab shot of a guy reading a book while waiting for his stop. What drew me to take it was the book - it's been a while since I saw anyone reading one quite so old - but I also liked the relationship between the book, his hands and his walking stick.

As you'll see if you take a look at the original, the final version is quite a bit darker than the original, especially at the edges, but there wasn't an easy way to manoever him into better light so I grabbed the shot in the hope that I'd be able to create something a bit more interesting during post-production.

Let me know what you think.

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4.00pm on 14/2/12 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 70mm f/4.0 1/30 aperture priority +1/3 evaluative 800 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

This was taken on the waterbus as we headed off for our dawn shoot: a shot of one of the many people heading off to a variety of photogenic locations throughout Venice. What I didn't realise at the time – I found out from one of our other group who spoke to her after we'd all finished shooting – was that she's 72 and has been coming to the Venice Carnival from Japan for over 20 years. I guess it's obvious that a whole range of different people will visit the event, for a variety of reasons, but it wasn't something I'd thought about up until that point.

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6.17am on 18/2/12 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 70mm f/2.8 1/40 aperture priority +1/3 evaluative 800 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

This is another shot from Istanbul, taken from a roof bar which I think was quite close to the Galata Tower. What amused me about this scene was the restaurant across the way, which looks like a gazebo perched on the top of a five storey building. I'm sure it was safe enough, but it did look rather precarious.

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2.31pm on 8/11/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM 90mm f/11.0 1/30 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 2x1