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

This is a shot of the Jumeirah Beach Residences taken from the lowest frond of the Palm in Dubai while I was running my Shoot The City, Day & Night workshop that I ran at the GPP Fotoweekend training event in November. It's also the image that GPP are using to advertise the next occurrence of this workshop at GPP 2012. If you think you might be interested in attending, take a look at all the workshops that will be running this year. It's always a great event, but this year's line-up is truly fantastic.

In other news, if you haven't had a chance yet, head on over and take a look at my new photography and post-production blog. There's only one post so far, detailing what I'm going to be including, but I've also asked for some feedback from you, particularly in terms of what you'd like me to include. So have a look at my first post and let me know what you think.

And finally, I have a few one-to-one training dates coming up – February 24th, May 17th and May 21st–24th. If you're interested, take a look at our events page and one-to-one training page for further details.

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6.00pm on 15/11/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 35mm f/9.0 30s manual n/a evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

Not exactly a festive shot, but it was taken on Christmas Eve :)

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11.18am on 24/12/11 iPhone 4 ProCamera f/2.8 1/200 80 no Photoshop CS5 Topaz Denoise 16x9

When I first visited the desert I had a variety of expectations regarding what I would find: tranquility, untouched dunes running from horizon to horizon, the odd camel or two meandering around, crystal clear blue skies, and so on. It's not like that though, especially on the weekend, when the whole of Dubai and Abu Dhabi take to their quad-bikes, dune-buggies and 850bhp monster racing machines to bash their way around the largest dunes they can find.

We did try to avoid them – the big dune you can see in the shot below, which was about 500m away from where we based ourselves, was deserted when we arrived – but within half an hour or so several convoys of vehicles arrived and started racing up and down it.

Once they got bored with that they started circling around the dunes we were photographing, which was part irritating, part photo opportunity. I didn't get too many shots of them I was happy with, but did like this one: a shot of Robert (one of the students for my Lanscape Photography workshop at the recent Gulf Photo Plus FotoWeekend event) risking life and limb to get the shot :)

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3.00pm on 18/11/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 24mm f/7.1 1/2500 aperture priority +1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

Officially the Gulf Photo Plus FotoWeekend event begins today, but I started yesterday with the first occurrence of my new Shoot the City workshop. This is a one day shooting workshop covering three locations: the Ubora building at Business Bay (where this shot was taken), Palm Jumeirah at sunset, then the Four Points by Sheraton hotel on Sheik Zayed road for some night shooting. This is the first time I've run a shooting only workshop - I normally end up teaching at least some post-production during my GPP workshops - so it was great to see that this one turned out to be popular enough to schedule an extra occurrence.

As for this image: it's a shot of my extremely capable and talented assistant, Khaled Termanini.

Let me know what you think.

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2.12pm on 15/11/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM 35mm f/8.0 1/640 aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

Five points for identifying the subject matter, another five for correctly identifying which camera I used :)

Update (November 3rd): Congratulations to Mark Alcock for working out that this is a shot of an aluminium flight case taken with an iPhone 4.

This is a shot of one of my favourite structures, the old end of the pier at St. Annes, on the north west coast of England. I've photographed it many times before but this is one of my definite favourites.

I've also added this one as this week's Mini-PSD as the processing was quite interesting, particularly in terms of balancing the left side of the image with the right. If you've taken a look at the original you'll see that the left-hand third is quite a bit darker than the rest of the image. When I took the shot I thought that this would prove to be an interesting aspect of the final image. The more I worked on it though the less I liked it – it just looked wrong, as though I'd added the extra darkness/density on purpose.

Anyway, after a while I realised that it wasn't going to work so reprocessed it to balance both sides. If you're subscribed to the tutorials and download this Mini-PSD you'll see that the first curve is labelled Curves 17, a fair indication of just how long I messed around with this one before deciding on a strategy that would work :)

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1.29pm on 20/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 24mm f/11.0 1/320 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 Topaz Denoise 16x9

This was taken on Blackpool beach, facing north towards Fleetwood, at around 9pm last Friday evening. We'd been down on the beach photographing this year's International Fireworks competition (which was a bit disappointing in comparison to some of the other display's I've seen in recent years) and then decided to hang around and do some night photography.

If you've already taken a look at the original you'll see that a) I used two images, and b) that the final version is quite different to both of them.

I did plan on shooting this as a single frame (the image on the left) but the sky in the upper-right section ended up being very bright and featureless. The reason for this is that the clouds were drifting across the sky during the two minute exposure (f/5.6, ISO 100). The other shot started out as a test image, taken to calculate the exposure time I'd need for the longer exposure. There are different ways to do this, but I typically shoot at f/2.8 and ISO 6400, and then work out the exposure from there. The benefit of doing this is that you can easily calculate the exposure you need, but you can also check the composition (often difficult when it's very dark).

So, the exposure for the test shot was 0.6s at f/2.8 and ISO 6400, which translates to 2 minutes at f/5.6 and ISO 100.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the sky looked better in the test shot, but the detail in the lower section was compromised through shooting at f/2.8 and ISO 6400, so I merged the two and then noise reduced the sky from the test shot. I also changed the white balance of both shots (to almost blue), tweaked the contrast, then added shifted the saturation and tone to produce a darker, colder shade.

Let me know if you think it was worth the effort.

I may be completely wrong, but I suspect that this one might be a bit more popular than my previous shot of this broken hard drive. Let me know what you think.

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11.38am on 6/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 100mm f/2.8 macro USM f/22.0 1/5 aperture priority 0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

This is a companion shot to this one, a shot of Blackpool Tower, taken on my trip back to the UK in October. In many ways I think I prefer the first shot I posted, but I do like this one too.

On a related note, I'll be using this image for our latest Mini-PSD: the 52nd to be added to the archive since we started including them as part of our tutorials. If you're interested, I'll be uploading it at some point tomorrow morning.

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10.52am on 10/10/10 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 24mm f/16.0 1/1000 aperture priority -2 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

Here's another image from Jane and Nik's wedding that I shot back in October. My favourite shot from the one's I've posted is still this one (the rather serious looking Italian uncle), but I'm pleased with this one too.

In other news: if you'd be interested in some one-to-one training (either at our Blackpool office or at your own location in the UK) – on photography, post-production, or both – I now have some confirmed dates when I'll be back in the UK to provide training:

Thursday 10th February
Friday 11th February
Saturday 12th February
Sunday 13th February

Thursday 24th March
Friday 25th March
Saturday 26th March
Sunday 27th March

If you think you might be interested please email me [djn1 AT chromasia DOT com] or Libby [Libby AT chromasia DOT com] for further details.

And finally, don't forget that our 25% discount offer on our Photoshop tutorials ends at midnight on the 7th. Further info here:

http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/

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3.06pm on 8/10/10 Canon 5D Mark II EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM 200mm f/5.6 1/160 aperture priority +1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

Here's another shot of Blackpool's North Pier, taken a few minutes before my last entry, and in some ways I think I prefer this one. As always though, let me know what you think.

In other news ...

My latest Critique Slot Screencast is now live. These are a part of our online tutorials and are based on an image submitted by one of our members. The basic idea of each screencast is to work through the original image (critiquing the various changes that were made) and then reprocess the image from the original RAW file.

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9.04am on 14/10/10 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 70mm f/8.0 1/80 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

As I mentioned yesterday, Libby has been back in the UK this week, while I've been at home in BG looking after the kids, and while I can't say it's been easy, or that I've enjoyed every minute, it has been rewarding. Anyway, in light of her imminent return, I looked through all the shots I have that are blogable, in search of something symbolically relevant to post. Unfortunately though I don't have any flower shots, or anything even vaguely romantic, so settled for this one: two tracks converging and running together. Not the most obvious of heartfelt messages, but the best I could do :)

In other news, my Creating Dramatic Images workshop that I'll be running in Austin (TX) early next year (Feb. 5th and 6th) is now full. There are a few spaces left on my one day HDR Crash Course though (Feb. 4th). So, if you're interested in learning more about HDR photography, and can get to Austin on February 4th, drop Dave Wilson a line (who will be organising both workshops):

dave AT davewilsonphotography DOT com

And if you want a bit more info about what we're going to be covering, take a look at this page:

http://davewilsonphotography.com/workshops/

And if you still have any questions, drop me a line:

djn1 AT chromasia DOT com

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10.26am on 14/10/10 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 24mm f/5.6 1/160 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor transformation

Before we headed out to the desert my students and I spent some time discussing the types of shots we should aim for. It was a landscape workshop, so clearly we needed some shots of the dunes, the sky, and so on, but we also discussed a range of more specific shots we might take: footprints in the sand, tyre tracks, people, patterns in the sand, and so on.

This is my 'patterns in the sand' shot.

In other news ...

Bobbi and I head down to Abu Dhabi this morning, to deliver a few more workshops, but after that we're off to Muscat (Oman) for some serious 'people and places' shooting :)

This is a shot of Finley, our almost five year old son. He's grown up a lot since he was featured on the cover of my first photography book; Baby Photography Now :)

While it's possible to take bad shots of Rhowan, especially when she's not in the mood to be photographed, it's certainly not difficult to take nice ones :)

On a totally different matter: I've switched to using jQuery to switch between my processed and original images, i.e. when you hover your mouse over the link beneath the main image it should fade to the original image rather than just switching it in. I'm fairly sure that it will work in most browser/OS combinations, and have done quite a bit of testing, but if you do have any problems with it please let me know.

This is the third image in my St. Annes sunset series (the first two are here and here) and may well be my favourite of the four.

This one was converted to black and white using the channel mixer (as described in my Black and White: part one tutorial), then toned using the selective color tool (see my Toning Colour Images tutorial).

On a related note, and as you'll see if you read the 'latest news' bit below, you can currently sign up for one of three of our Photoshop tutorials for free. Our Toning Colour Images tutorial is one of these so, if you're interested in finding out a bit more about the toning techniques I use for both my colour and black and white images (e.g. curves, selective color, channel mixer), sign up for that one.

As I mentioned when I posted this shot, one of the things that Jason wanted to cover during his recent one-to-one training was 'seeing creatively'. As an exercise, we took four different shots of one of the groynes on Fleetwood beach. In my first shot it was used as a frame, while in this one it was used as a backdrop. Of the other two shots, one uses the groyne as a leading line, while the other focusses on some of the small scale detail in the wood.

As an exercise, especially if you find a subject a bit overwhelming at first, breaking a shot down in this way really helps to focus your attention: just list the various ways in which a particular element could appear within a shot, and then shoot them all. Some will work better than others, but the more you practice the easier it gets: in terms of thinking about which shots to take, and in finding ones that will produce the most interesting results.

There are numerous reasons to post-produce an image. At its most moderate it's a process of tidying up minor problems (e.g. dust spots), maybe adding a touch more contrast, and so on. Tweaking reality, if you like. At the other extreme, as I discussed in relation to the structure of light, it's a case of pre-visualising the final image and then shooting a deliberately mundane exposure in order to create a more dramatic image in post. In this case the post-production is more about creating a new reality rather than tweaking an existing one. And if you're interested, 'the structure of light' is the image I'll be discussing in my next Creative Workflow tutorial, due out before the end of this month.

Between these two extremes though are images such as this one: where the shift between the original and final image is clearly significant, but not quite as dramatic. If you take a look at the original you will see what I mean:

.../archives/seeing_the_light.php

For me, the important thing here is not how a particular change was made, but why. So, for example, you could ask me about the technical changes I made to this image, and I could tell you about the Channel Mixer layer I used to desaturate the sea, and the Curves I used to selectively adjust both the contrast and tone, but those questions wouldn't get you any closer to understanding why I made those changes.

To put this another way, one of the things I'm often asked is "how do you know when to stop post-producing an image?", and there isn't an easy answer to this question, at least not one that can be phrased in technical terms. The problem here is that the question can only be answered from an aesthetic point of view: it's finished when you're happy with it, when it says what you want it to say.

From a technical point of view, this can be problematic, as there is rarely a one-to-one correspondence between a specific technical change and a desired aesthetic outcome. For example, if you are aiming to produce a moody, emotively 'dark' image, then it may be the case that a large increase in contrast will help, or a vignette, or a black and white conversion, and so on. For some images these changes will work. For other images though, you will need to take a different approach.

Anyway, I'm waffling – mostly because it's a topic that I find fascinating – but also because it's a round about way of introducing the changes that I made to this image. In this instance, my aim was a simple one: to capture the feeling of being there. The visual reality, as you will have seen if you have taken a look at the original, wasn't anything special, but the feeling of being there – listening to the gentle sounds of the sea, while watching the contrail dissipate towards a bright and distant horizon – was a lot more profound. I felt at home there. Whether my edited version manages to convey any of that to you though is a different question entirely :)

Here's another shot I took while in Dubai a couple of weeks ago, and beyond that I'm not going to tell you anything about it as I'm using it as the basis for our latest competition to win a lifetime membership to our Photoshop tutorials. If you're interested, there's some further information linked below:

    http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/competition.php