I was going to post something other than a shot of the DIFC tonight, but this is one of only two that I have left so I thought I might as well post them now. Both were taken with my 15mm fisheye, but this is a) the more natural looking of the two, and b) my least favourite of the set.

When I was younger I used to enjoy climbing – not in a north face of the Eiger sort of way, but I did enjoy it. The older I've got though, the more I really don't like heights, so struggled a bit with this one. It was taken from the helipad of the building I shot the Burj Dubai from, and what made it especially unnerving was that there were absolutely no safety measures: no guard rails, no netting, just a long drop down.

Anyway, I was perfectly safe, and didn't get within five feet of the edge, but my knees were feeling decidedly rubbery by the time I'd composed the shot and taken the three images I used for the HDR. And if you're interested, the building on the right of this image is the one that was on the left of my shot of the Burj Dubai; i.e. this one was taken about 90° to the left.

The shot I'm going to put up tomorrow, while nowhere near as dramatic, is probably one of my favourite HDRs in recent months. It was also taken from much nearer the ground :-)

This one was taken from the same building as yesterday's, but from the 24th floor rather than the 34th, and the angle of view is about 90° to the right. Personally, I prefer yesterday's, but I thought I'd post this one too. I also have one, shot from a bit higher up the building, but I'm going to post that one on Monday.

The tall building you can see in the distance is the Burj Dubai, which earlier this month became the world's tallest structure at 629m – a shade over two thousand feet. When it's finished it's expected to exceed 700m and have over 160 floors. To put that in perspective, this shot was taken from round about the 34th floor of an apartment building; i.e. the Burj Dubai will eventually be around five times higher than this vantage point. When it's finished I'd really like to take a shot from the top :-)

I took two more shots from this building that I like, one of which I'll post tomorrow, the other of which will go up on Monday.

Oh, and many thanks for all the great comments on yesterday's image – they were much appreciated.

This is a follow-up to the firework shot I put up the other day. At the time, I wasn't sure that I liked this one, but after playing around with it for a few days I decided that it was probably worth putting up, not least because it's a slightly unusual take on this theme. Personally, I find firework shots great fun to shoot, but it's so easy to end up with a clichéd result that I'm not often keen on any of the shots that I get.

Anyway – as always – let me know what you think.

This isn't quite as good as the shots I took at last year's international fireworks competition (here and here), but I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out – it's colourful if nothing else. Last year I had the benefit of access to the pier, from where the fireworks were launched, but this year we were a bit further back – on the esplanade just north of the North Pier. It was a good vantage point, but the shots I took are not quite as dynamic as I would have liked.

In terms of the EXIF data: I haven't posted it because all the shots I took were shot on bulb, with an aperture of f/16, ISO 100, and shutter speeds ranging from one to around eight seconds. I definitely have one more to put up, which is a bit different from this one, but I'm not sure about the rest. If any of them are OK, I'll put them up.

First of all, thanks for your comments on yesterday's entry – there have been plenty of times when I've seriously doubted that I'd make it to 1000 images, so it was good to hear that the majority of them have been appreciated :-)

So, no we've got that milestone out the way, here's entry number 1001, a composite of two exposures – one for the sky, one for the moon (i.e. two shots of the same scene at different exposures, rather than the moon from one and the sky from another).

Having taken this one I really wish I had a very long lens, or a 2x converter, or even a telescope, as I'd really like to try a much closer shot than this one. This one's ok, and does show quite a bit of detail, but it would be nice to be able to capture a full-frame image.

Oh, and a couple of people (in yesterday's comments) asked about how we pronounce chromasia:

crow-maze-ea

... with the emphasis on the "m": chroMasia. "Crow", as in the bird, "maze", as in the crop, and "ea" prounced as a long "e" (i.e. the letter name) and a short "a" (the letter sound, as in "bat"). Out of interest, let me know if you've been pronouncing it differently.

I don't think this one is quite in the same league as yesterday's, but it does do a reasonably good job of demonstrating quite how hectic it can get when you're close to a big display. What I probably didn't make clear yesterday is that the crowd were viewing this display from the promenade and the display was launched from the pier. I was with the launching team, about one third of the way down the pier; probably a few hundred feet from the sea-front. It wasn't the best angle from which to view the display, but it was certainly a lot more exciting than either standing with everyone else or shooting the display from the beach.

As with yesterday's this was shot at f/16, but this one was a nine second exposure. And in this instance I've cropped a 3x2 portrait format shot to a 3x2 landscape one. Normally, I wouldn't post anything that had been cropped so drastically, but with fireworks the only viable option is to set up your camera and try and work out what will end up in the shot. In this one, there's a considerable amount of blown out areas in the original so I could bin it or crop it.

There's a final display next Friday so I'll try and come up with another interesting location to shoot from, either that or I'll shoot from the pier again.

Three weeks ago today I mentioned that it was the start of the International Fireworks competition is Blackpool. Every Friday since then there has been a display: from Croatia, Italy, France and China. I also mentioned that a) I'd put up a shot from each display, and b) it would be a creative interpretation of a fireworks shot. Well, as the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed, I only posted the first rather odd one, and there haven't been any since up until this one, from China's display earlier this evening.

I have been photographing them, but I was commissioned by Blackpool Tourism – which has been great – but I haven't had too much leeway to experiment (the displays only last for about 25 minutes) so have taken quite a number of standard fireworks shots, which were fun to take, do a good job of showing the fireworks in relation to Blackpool Tower and the pier (from which they were launched), but I haven't felt like posting them here.

I think that the main problem is that I don't much like images of fireworks. They're great fun to shoot, but not overly riveting to look at, so up until this evening I haven't produced anything I felt like sharing. This one though, I like a lot more.

In previous weeks I've shot from the beach, but tonight I was on the pier alongside the crew who were launching the display and this is one from about 140 shots, taken at f/16 with an exposure of two seconds.

First of all, my apologies for not managing to post anything yesterday, but by the time I had some free time I was feeling terrible, so went to bed instead. I've now posted an image to cover yesterday's shot: it's not a great photograph, but it does contextualise mine and Paul's experience.

As for this one: I don't think it's as striking as the previous one (thanks for all your comments on that one) but there are two things I like about it: the apparent left-right shift from night to day, and the mix of sodium lighting and the much colder light of the moon.

Update: following a couple of the initial comments I've darkened this one slightly.

I'm cheating a bit with this one, i.e. posting it a day late yet dating it the 10th, but I thought it would be a good one to fill the gap between the two night shots of the wrecks. In this one you can see Paul on his side of the roof with the shore in the distance behind him. Fortunately, it was already past high-tide at this point so, despite both being absolutely frozen, we were beginning to relax a little in the knowledge that we weren't about to a) be submerged, or b) make total fools of ourselves by calling the coast guard ;-)

I went back to the wrecks last night, with Paul, and what should have been a gentle stroll under the stars turned into something a little more adventurous ... to say the least. It was 11.30pm, and the tide was coming in as we were taking a shot of one of the boats.

We checked the tide times on Paul's web-enabled phone, and confirmed that high tide was 11.36pm. So, almost high tide, but we were getting our feet wet. We decided to climb aboard one of the boats I'd photographed before – wyre wreck #5 – and wait until the tide receded. We took a few shots and noticed that the tide was still rising – it was now about a foot deep around the boat. We pondered for a while, and it got deeper. At this point it was beginning to look as though we were stuck on the boat for a while.

When it started filling the bottom of the boat we decided we better climb onto what was left of the roof, Paul on one side, me on the other. We checked the website again and found out that the tide time were GMT, not British summertime; i.e. high tide was expected at around 12.36pm.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the tide came within three feet of the roof of the boat, by which point we were several hundred yards from the shore, and we didn't manage to get off again until 2.30am by which point we were frozen silly. Still, I did get this shot and we didn't have to call the coast guard, so all in all the trip probably counts as a success ;-)

Oh, and I haven't put up the EXIF data but this was taken at 17mm (or thereabouts) and was a four minute exposure at f/5.6.

First of all, thanks for all the great comments on yesterday's shot – as I write this it's my 11th most commented entry. Admittedly, loads of them were written by me, but it's still not bad ;-)

Anyway, here's the last in this short series and I really can't decide between this one and yesterday's. That said, if I had to choose one of them I guess it might be yesterday's. Oh, I don't know – you tell me.

One interesting point, that I nearly forgot about: the bright lines on the horizon (towards the left-edge of the image, and from the right edge to around a quarter of the way in) are boat trails; i.e. boats moving along the horizon during this eight minute exposure.

On a related note: I bought one of those little spirit levels that you attach to the flash hot-shoe of your camera the other day and I have to say that it was brilliant for night photography. Under normal circumstances getting the horizon level at night – i.e. when you probably can't see it – is a bit of a hit or miss affair. The spirit level, which was only a few pounds, has already saved me loads of time and effort and I definitely recommend you get one if you're going to do any night shooting.

At the risk of boring you all to death, here's the second of three night shots of Fleetwood pier, all of which have been processed rather differently.

One of the things I really love about night photography is the ability to turn darkness into light, and while last night wasn't pitch black – it's only a few days until the full moon – there didn't seem to be a great deal of light around. Another thing I enjoy is deciding on the colour balance of a shot. Out of the camera, at least if you don't set the white balance, most shots have an orange cast as a result of the light pollution from the sodium lamps used in most towns and cities. This shot (and yesterday's and tomorrow's) was much the same, a rather insipid orange/brown. So, rather than leave it that way, or go for a more 'natural' look (as with yesterday's shot), I thought I'd try something different with this one. And just for once, the argument that it's been Photoshopped is, IMO, irrelevant; i.e. when you can't really see the scene in the first place it's more difficult to argue that one interpretation is more appropriate than another ;-)

Oh, and I can't decide which is my favourite of the three, this one, or tomorrow's; so I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.

My apologies for this being a bit late, but I didn't have anything to put up this evening so went out night shooting. And, what with one thing and another, I'm rather behind schedule this evening.

As for this shot: it's yet another photograph of Fleetwood Pier, and while I'm not 100% happy with it, I did enjoy spending an hour or so on the beach and will probably go out again over the next few days if the weather holds out.

I spent some time earlier today wishing that I had something more appropriate or better to put up, but this is all I have left. Besides, when I thought a bit more, I realised I have no idea what an "appropriate" or "better" shot would be on a day when several bombs have exploded in London. As I write 37 people are dead, and many more are critically ill and dying. Not a good day.

This is the first of four shots taken at the same time as looking down from the hill when I was out with John and Ioannis last week. None of them, in my opinion, are entirely spectacular, but I'm mostly pleased with how they turned out.

On another matter: I've added some javascript to prettify the hover text that appears with the various links on the site and have tested it reasonably thoroughly but do let me know if you experience any problems with it.

And finally: I'm now massively behind with answering emails but do hope to catch up at some point. So if you have emailed me, I will respond as soon as I possibly can.

Ok, so the title's a bit of an exaggeration, but I do like the fact that the left and right sides of the shot appear to be of different (albeit similar) scenes.

I love this time of year: it's warm, the light is still wonderful even at 22 minutes past eleven, and better still tomorrow is my last busy day at work before the summer :-)

On another matter, and thanks to all the people who emailed me and left comments to let me know, chromasia has made an appearance on time.com as one of their 50 Coolest Websites 2005 ... which is cool ;-)

From the vantage point of yesterday's shot: turn 90 degrees to the right and wait about an hour and a half. This is the companion shot to touchdown #1, and I much prefer this one.

Quick update: A couple of people have asked about the (monochromatic) toning on this image but the image wasn't toned. What you see here is a white-balance corrected image. I forget exactly which bit of the image I used as a white/grey point but I didn't do anything else to the colour of this shot. Also, the exposure, despite being five minutes plus, was relatively easy to set; i.e. this would have only been a 20 second exposure at f/4.0. In other words, I just metered at maximum aperture then adjusted the exposure time for f/16. Each stop you close the aperture doubles the exposure time: f/5.6 = 40s, f/8.0 = 80s, and so on.

This is the last shot in this series and while the previous five were taken on the 29th April with John, this one was taken the following night with Paul (not long before this shot). And it should be obvious from the time it was taken, but this isn't a sunset.

Oh, and in recognition of the fact that this is undoubtedly one of my favourite structures, I've set up a new category, which can be viewed as either a category (which includes the text of the entry) or a gallery (which is just the medium sized thumbnails).

And finally, and I don't know why I'm asking this as I'm not sure I can answer it, which one is your favourite of the six? For me, I think it might be number 5, closely followed/equalled by numbers three and one, but I'll probably change my mind again at some point ;-)

I was going to continue posting my 'walk along the beach' shots today but I got a call from Paul yesterday evening saying he was on the beach and it was a glorious sunset. Anyway, by the time I got there the sun had set but we decided to go and do some more night photography of my favourite structure.

Unfortunately though the night looked as though it was going to be a washout as i) the moon didn't come up (I forgot to check the times, and when we tried ringing Bob to ask him we got an answer-machine), and ii) there was a lot of mist in the air (which equals lots of light pollution).

Anyway, we climbed up on top of the pier and took a few shots of the twilight (one of which I might post in a few days) but none of the other shots we tried worked out. In the end though, we both got a reasonable shot by turning around to shoot towards the shore.

As for this shot: it's the first of two that I'll put up. My wife prefers this one, while I like tomorrow's best, so as always I'd be interested to hear what you think. Paul's shot will be going up at about 12.10am tomorrow and I think this will be the url.

Update: following the first couple of comments I thought I'd clarify what this is. Many years ago, this structure (on which Paul and I are standing to take this shot) was part of St. Annes pier – the subject of this shot. But at some point the joining sections burnt down leaving the structure about 150 feet away from the end of the pier. So, last night we were stood on the former end of the pier photographing the current end of the pier.

I had a great time last night with Paul and John and we spent about three and a half hours taking shots of the moon, each other, the weird structure at St. Annes, the sea, and a whole host of other things. And I really wish that I could say that this shot was a prelude to a sequence of wonderful shots from our evening together, but it's not. For one reason or another this is probably the only shot I'll be putting up as the rest just aren't up to it. Some are blurred, some are just not very interesting, and the others didn't work out for numerous other reasons (mostly related to pilot-error).

But no matter, it was a good night. John has already put up a companion shot to this one, a portrait of me and Paul, and Paul has posted a fisheye shot of the weird structure at St. Annes (which is actually the end of the pier prior to it burning down a number of years ago).

I had planned to go out on a macro shooting frenzy today, but events conspired against me. I had a hellish night with our almost two year old (which involved about five hours on the sofa, no sleep, and the dreaded Noddy DVD droning in the background) and then we had friends round for lunch. And by the time they left I was wiped out and fell asleep. By the time I woke up it was dark so that was the end of my great plans for the day. So, instead, here's another shot that I've been pondering over for a couple weeks but, for one reason or another, haven't put up.

I thought I'd pick up on a couple of the comments from yesterday this evening, specifically, this one from tobias:

"I feel purely through observing the images that you happened upon the the recent two and thought 'they'll do'.

And this one from miklos:

"All I was saying is that people should not be afraid to comment negatively. And they are. Every photoblog is like that. You get an overwhelming amount of 'great photo' comments and none that say 'I don't like this shot'."

First, there's some truth in what tobias says, I do look through the shots I've taken and sometimes my response is akin to 'they'll do'. But, and this is important, chromasia is a daily venture – I aim to put up something every day, regardless. And sometimes that means that I put up stuff that isn't as good as other stuff (for want of a better way of putting it). And as far as I'm concerned that's no big deal: I make the best of what I have on a given day. In an ideal world – where it didn't rain, I didn't have too much to do at work, the kids didn't get sick, the dog didn't need a walk, and all the other thousand and one things that make up a life didn't get in the way – I'd have time to take better photographs. But the bottom-line is that I don't always have that luxury.

As for negative comments: that's a bit more difficult. Imagine you meet an old friend that you haven't seen for years, and he or she recently got married. You're introduced to their spouse, and you chat a while. After a few minutes the spouse heads off to talk to someone else leaving you to catch up with your friend. At which point you say:

"You have a beautiful wife/adorable husband (delete as appropriate)".

... and nobody bats an eyelid.

Or you say:

"Jeez, your new wife/husband really sucks!"

At which point mouths fall open, a hush falls over the room, and your friend marvels at your lack of social graces ;-)

I think "great photo" is like the former and "I don't like this shot" is not entirely dissimilar to the latter. Neither benefit me as a photographer – they don't improve my technique, push me forward, make me think about the shot in a way that I hadn't done previously – but the former does serve a positive social function (it's a nice, affirmatory sort of thing to say) while the latter is just a downer.

"I think you could improve this shot by ..." is great, as is "I don't think this works because ...", but "I don't like this", or "this is crap", is, well, crap ;-)

So, to sum up, I'm with miklos on this one. People shouldn't be afraid to leave critical comments, but I'd much prefer constructive criticism to simple negativity.

Anyway, enough of that, tell me what you think of this one. It's one of about ten long exposures that I took yesterday evening and is the best of the bunch. About half the others looked as though they were shot in daylight (and hence aren't very interesting), two or three were too badly underexposed to use, and the rest were just crap.

While I couldn't decide between the colour and monochrome versions of yesterday's shot I definitely prefer the monochrome version of this one. The colour one, if you're interested, is here:

.../archives/evening_caberet_2.php

And other than that I don't have a great deal to say about this one other than that I'd be interested to hear how you think it compares to yesterday's, both in terms of the quality of the shots and the feelings they both evoke.

And finally, if you haven't already done so (following my comment yesterday) go check out Travis Ruse's new blog, Express Train. Better yet, go add him to your favourites at photoblogs.org as I do think that this is one of the better new blogs that I've seen in quite some time – not least because I don't think there are many of us who could produce such compelling portraits under these circumstances.

This is the first of two very similar shots, and I hesitated about putting both up as separate entries but a) I think that they have a different feel to one another, and hence are both worth seeing, and b) I'm trying to post more sequences of images rather than just stand-alone shots. Also, I really couldn't decide whether to post the monochrome or colour versions of these shots so have put up both. The colour version of this shot can be seen here:

.../archives/evening_caberet_1.php

Possibly, if I'd just intended to post this shot and not tomorrow's, I might have gone with the colour version, but I'm not sure. I like the vibrancy of the colour shot but, for some reason that I can't explain, the monochrome version seems more powerful (this may just be my reaction but it gives me a real feeling of claustrophobia). Anyway, the deciding factor was that I was putting both up, and as a pair I think they work much better in monochrome.

Oh, and if anyone's interested, both today's and tomorrow's shot were toned by using the Channel Mixer to extract the red channel and then the Curves tool to i) boost the shadows in the red channel, slightly decrease the shadows and boost the highlights in the green channel, and decrease the shadows in the blue channel. This warms/colorises the darker areas of the image while retaining a fairly neutral colour balance in the highlights.

And for those of you who like urban/people photography I'm pleased to be able to say that Travis Ruse has just re-launched his photoblog. Express Train (which replaces Here to There - recently mentioned at blog.photoblogs) is a chronicle of Travis's daily commute from Park Slope, Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan and features many wonderful shots. To get you started you might want to take a look at this portrait, or this one, this rather futuristic view of Grand Central Station, or a view from the N train somewhere in Brooklyn.

First of all, many thanks from both me and my wife for all the wonderful comments on yesterday's entry. Hopefully I'll be documenting our journey towards parenthood and will be putting up various shots over the coming months. And I was going to say that you probably shouldn't expect any shots of the actual birth, but then I remembered there's an intervalvometer on my remote release so you never know ;-) Anyway, thanks again, we both really appreciate all you kind words.

As for this shot: it's somewhat more sombre than my recent stuff, but I quite like the way it turned out.

About four hours ago my wife said:

"What are you going to put up this evening?"

To which I replied:

"I don't know. I don't have anything yet."

To which she said:

"Why don't you put up that one you took of the phone boxes, I like that one."

"Because I don't think it's all that good a shot."

Anyway, four hours later, after numerous photographs of our kids, paper-weights, china dolls and assorted miscellaneous items – all of which were crap – here's the shot of the four phone boxes, which I'm a bit disappointed with, especially after yesterday's shot, but I guess it will do ;-)

For quite some time now I've had a particular shot in mind, involving my favourite structure, the Pole star, and some really long star trails ... and, obviously, this isn't it ;-)

I went out last night (this may well be the last shot I put up from 2004) and it started out being a reasonably clear night. But within about ten minutes of me setting up my camera a very fine mist started coming in from the sea and radically changed the quality of the light. On a crystal clear night I can almost eradicate the town lights from my shots, but when there's any moisture in the air it's an entirely different story – the tungsten glow seeps through the air, and on very long exposures it fogs the image (I took a 16 minute exposure last night, and while it wasn't over-exposed, it wasn't worth putting up as it looked as though it was taken inside an orange cloud).

Oh, and Happy New Year :-)