I was going to write more this evening but both Tabby (11 months) and Finley (three in August) are sleeping really badly this evening – both are nodding off for around ten minutes then waking up again. Anyway, the upshot is that I've been trying to write this entry for almost two hours, and it's very slow progress.

So, the short version is that this is another shot of Central Pier, facing north; i.e. I'm further down the beach than yesterday.

If you flick through the other shots I've taken of Blackpool's Central Pier you will see that this is a vantage point I've used quite often, and its one that I'll probably use again.

This is an HDR, comprised of six bracketed exposures, of the underside of Central Pier in Blackpool. The original images were taken quite a while ago, but it's only recently that I've been able to produce a decent HDR. The problem, in this instance, was that they were shot at 17mm with my 17-40 f/4L and the CA (chromatic aberration) at the edges of the images made creating a convincing HDR difficult. Anyway, I finally realised that all I needed to do was create some CA-corrected 16bit TIFFs and use them to construct the HDR image rather than the original RAW files. So, I processed the originals in ACR and loaded the subsequent TIFFs into Photomatix Pro, from which I created this image.

If you like this one you might also want to take a look at the following:

Under the North Pier #1
Under the North Pier #2
Under the North Pier #3
Under Fleetwood Pier

I think that the first is probably still my favourite.

On a totally unrelated matter: my apologies if you have been trying to access the tutorial pages today, but we ran into a technical problem at around 10.00 am this morning. For some reason, that we haven't quite managed to get to the bottom of yet, the entire folder vanished from the server. Anyway, we managed to get everything replaced by late afternoon (though had to recreate a few of the static pages and re-upload the masking tutorial), so everything should now be back to normal. That said, if you are a subscriber and run into any problems, please let me know.

This is a shot of Blackpool's Central Pier, taken from roughly half way towards the North Pier. It's a scene I've photographed many times before, but I don't imagine that I'll tire of it any time soon.

Oh, and this is an HDR, constructed from three bracketed exposures.

Yesterday, I said that I wasn't especially happy with the first 'little planet' I put up. I'm much happier with this one :-)

And again, it was constructed using the instructions on daily dose of imagery.

Update: just a quick note to let you know that I won't be posting anything new today (15.10.07). I'll get something up tomorrow.

I can't think of anything much to say about this one other than that I'm reasonably happy with the way it turned out.

I'm not sure that this will be to everyone's taste, but I'm really pleased with it, not least because I usually don't get especially good results when panning at slow shutter speeds. On this occasion though, it worked out much better than I expected.

First of all, thanks for all the positive comments on yesterday's shot; it's one of my recent favourites too :-)

Second, there were a number of interesting points that came up during the discussion, some of which I'll pick up over the next couple of days, but I thought I'd start with one raised by John (not John Washington I should add) who said:

"Looking through many of the images on this site, it becomes apparent that many many hours have been spent in the digital darkroom post-processing. They then start to loose the basic principles of what photography is all about - recording an image."

Right, here's my question, or point: and I don't want to get into the 'is it photography, is it digital art' question – i) because I don't think it matters, and ii) because the debate never goes anywhere (other than round in circles) – rather, I have a different question ... why is it that some people seem so insistent that photography must be about "recording an image" and nothing more? To me this is such a nonsensical position to adopt that I can't even begin to understand why someone would make this claim. It's like saying that all paintings should be impressionistic, or that sculpters should only produce lifelike figures, or any number of other "you should be doing this and not that" comments. How is it that people end up coming out with claims, that to me at least, seem totally indefensible?

As for this image (taken five minutes before yesterday's one): it's not as impressive as yesterday's, by quite some margin, but it does capture something of a Sunday morning's stroll along the shore.

Update: Following Jem's comment (below) I've amended this entry to take account of the fact that the price I was quoting for a new 50mm f/1.8 was a bit excessive.

I got a new lens yesterday, the 50mm f/1.4, to replace my f/1.8. Optically, there isn't anything wrong with the f/1.8 version – it's produced lot of shots that I'm happy with – but I have found the focussing a bit slow, particularly when trying to take portraits of the kids at a wide aperture. Anyway, I've replaced it with the f/1.4 (which was used to take today's and yesterday's shots) so am selling the old one (plus filter and hood). At today's prices, sourced from speedgraphic.co.uk and warehouse express (thanks Jem), the whole lot would cost £108.45, broken down as follows:

50mm f/1.8 II – £73.00
ES62AD hood – £17.95
B+W UV 010 MRC filter – £17.50

I'd be happy with something around the £60.00 mark so feel free to make me an offer. I would put it on eBay, but thought I'd see if anyone was interested first. Oh, and I do realise that this isn't much of a bargain if you live in the US – lenses being quite a bit cheaper over there – but did think someone in the UK might be interested.

Anyway, back to today's shot, which is a view of Blackpool's Central pier: this was as much a lens test as anything else, but I decided I liked the quality of light enough to put it up. Oh, and I can confirm that this is an exceptionally sharp lens. It's difficult to tell at this resolution, but the detail in the full size image is stunning. Much as I do like my zoom lenses, I don't think you can beat the sharpness of a good prime.

First of all, thanks for all the wonderful comments on yesterday's entry. As I write this it has 130 comments, tied for first place with this one. I have to say, though I like it a lot, that I didn't expect anywhere near such a positive response, but I guess that it struck a chord with a lot of you in much the same way as it did for me.

Anyway, I did intend to put up another kite shot today, that I also like, but after yesterday I don't think I want to post them back-to-back. So here's something slightly different.

As for post-processing – and I mean this comment generally, not specifically in relation to this shot – my own view is that there isn't any photograph you could show me that isn't post-processed in one way or another: the tonal response of the paper on which it's printed, the colour balance of the screen on which it's viewed, the particular effects of development time, and so on, and so on, and so on – all of these are post-processing, and using Photoshop on a digital image isn't any different to the myriad of decisions that go into the making of any photographic image.

The bottom line, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that there is no such thing as unmediated perception, not when I or you look at something (when our memories affect the way we see something, etc), and certainly not when we photograph it. It's all one big interpretive effort the important bit of which is the end result. Are you left with some sort of artefact that's evocative? Is the end result worth looking at or not? If the answer's yes, then the amount of post-processing is, for me, a total irrelevance.

Continuing the "deep blue sky" theme, here's another one, and this one, better than yesterday's, demonstrates that polarising filters can be quite effective in deepening the colour of the sky.

Update: as a couple of people have asked I've put up the original version of this shot here:

.../archives/deep_blue.php

All I did with this one was up the contrast with the Curves tool, boost the saturation a little with Hue/Saturation, and use another Curves adjustment layer to put a bit of colour (and a bit more contrast) into the woodwork in the foreground.

I'm a bit late putting up tonight's entry as I've been processing a set of images that need to be finished by tomorrow, of which this is one – a shot of the Big Wheel on Blackpool's Central pier.

Update: I decided to enter this shot for this week's Photo Friday challenge – Complexity.

I thought I'd put this one up too, by way of a companion to yesterday's shot. Oh, and tomorrow it's back to the portraits. I have three more that I want to put up, all of which I'm really pleased with, so it will be interesting to see what you make of them.

This scene intrigued me as I really wanted to know what was originally in the speech bubble before it was amended. I suspect it was probably something slightly more lewd, and probably wasn't all that amusing, but it caught my imagination at the time. And, as with my previous shot, this was taken on Blackpool's Central pier.

Ok, I decided to give the portraits a rest for a couple of days. I have three more that I want to put up, but I thought I'd try some different shots over the weekend (assuming I find time to go out and shoot some).

This one was taken a week ago, and at the time I really liked it. Now, I'm not entirely convinced. What I do like about it, though this is extrinsic to the image itself, is that it adds to my collection of documentary shots of Blackpool. It's one of the stalls on the Central Pier, and the aim is to hit three of the targets with a set of five darts. It should be easy enough, but these darts don't follow normal rules, and no matter how you throw them they inevitably end up in the spaces between the stars.

I mentioned yesterday that I'd say a bit more about manipulating images with Photoshop, but first ...

Isn't photography itself a form of visual manipulation? Photographs are never what we see – i.e. the mechanics of photography are not the same as the physiology of perception. For example, I don't perceive depth of field in the same way that it is captured by a lens, I can't visually compress the distances in a shot by using a telephoto eye, I can't freeze-frame a busy scene in my mind, my vision isn't monochromatic, and so on. So what counts as an image that isn't manipulated? One that comes straight from the camera? No, because it's already been subjected to the manipulation of photography. What I think is at stake here is not manipulation versus no manipulation, rather I think it's conventionalism versus digital processing. And leaving aside the fact that most of the things I do to my images could be replicated in a dark room (which rather negates the "no manipulation" argument anyway) I really don't see this as an issue.

For me, manipulation – i.e. altering an image in Photoshop after it's been taken – is an integral part of producing an image. I'm not interested in literal, objective or representational photography, that's not my aim. Rather, I'm trying to capture something of the way I see the world – the vibrancy, the colour, the texture, the patterns, the life, and so on – and Photoshop is a tool to that end.

So, I guess it depends on what you're after. If you want some sort of objective record (a conventional photograph) of an event or thing then I can see why "manipulation" might be seen as a bad thing, but if your photography is more interpretive then I guess you'll be more favourably inclined. For example: if you look at today's shot you might think that the sky probably wasn't quite that blue, and that maybe the rust wasn't quite so vibrant, and so on. But so what? This shot is about colour, and texture, and shapes, and the post-processing is my way of accentuating those aspects of this scene that I think are of interest.

I do have more to say about this – it's a subject that's quite dear to my heart – but perhaps that�s enough for now.

Oh, and this is the hub of the big wheel on Blackpool's Central Pier, and while I think the rust is aesthetically appealing it doesn't exactly inspire me to take a ride ;-)

My apologies for not writing much to accompany my recent entries, but I've just not had the time. As for this shot, and hence the title, it's a shot of Blackpool's Central pier taken from the North pier.

A quick update: Eskimo commented that this looks a bit jagged around the bar. This is light catching the metal rather than a resizing/sharpening artefact, and I did wonder about removing it in this version but didn't have the time to do it convincingly. Suffice to say that it's part of the shot and not a digital error, even if it does look like one ;-)

Update #2: Henning commented that the sky appeared a bit blotchy on this one so I thought I'd rework it. The original version was converted to black and white using the channel mixer to extract the red channel, mostly to get a bit more depth into a relatively flat sky. But because there's also quite a dramatic increase in contrast with this shot things became a bit blotchy. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I converted it to black and white using two Hue/Saturation adjustment layers, the top one set to desaturate the image, and the bottom one set to 'Color' blend mode (so that you can alter the Hue slider to control the final appearance of the image).

This is my wife's favourite shot of the last four mostly I think because of the textures, particularly the small 'waves' of foam in the foreground, whereas my first choice would have been yesterday's shot. If you have the time could you tell me which is your favourite and, if possible, why?

Oh, and I've been told that voting for the Best of Blogs Awards 2004 is continuing until the 17th of this month (see this page) so do feel free to continue voting for chromasia :-)

Yesterday was yet another family birthday – this time for our nine year old daughter – and this shot was taken as we took a spin on the big wheel on Blackpool's Central pier (which can be seen in this shot).

And I do know it's not a particularly great shot, but it was the best I could manage to commemorate the day. I should add that I did take quite a few as we went round on the wheel, but I was somewhat distracted by a) my daughter's enjoyment, b) the height, c) the rustiness of the various bolts that held it all together, and c) the view, which was splendid. And all of those shots were terrible ;-)

Update: Having looked at this one again I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as I first thought ;-)

Having posted entries for the last 38 Photo Friday challenges I didn't want to miss one so have interrupted my guest posters, albeit only briefly. I took this yesterday evening, as we wandered along the beach with the kids. It isn't the most immediately relevant shot for this challenge – Ocean – not least because this is the Central Pier in Blackpool and the 'Ocean' you can see in this shot is the Irish Sea, but I am pleased with the way it turned out.

Right; back to the unpacking :-)