Meet Wendy.

We met Wendy and her husband in Bulgaria – they live in a village on the opposite side of the valley from us – but Wendy is currently back in the UK after being diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time in 20 years. She's currently part way through a course of chemotherapy, which will be followed by another 12 months of treatment with Herceptin, so will be staying in the UK for the foreseeable future.

As you can see though, she's not letting it get her down :)

It was the first day of the 2010 Gulf Photo Plus workshops today, and I had a great time. I was down at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), who were kind enough to host our HDR location shoot and, although I haven't seen many of their images yet, I'm pretty sure my students got some great shots. Catalin Marin has already posted his first one, and I'm sure that plenty more will appear over the next day or so ... including some of my own.

In the meanwhile, here's a shot of one of my students, taking an exposure sequence underneath the DIFC.

On which note, I'm hitting the sack as I have a full day in the labs tomorrow: HDR post-production in the morning, and ‘enhancing portraits’ in the afternoon. It's going to be a fun day :)

This is another shot of the same young boy, taken about 15 minutes before the previous one and, as you can see, he's not quite as confident in this one. By the end of the evening he was running up to me and grinning from ear to ear, but at this point his approaches were a bit more cautious :)

If you're interested, the somewhat less than inspiring original is here:

.../archives/an_infectious_smile_2.php

We went to a party at our village hall last night, to celebrate Trifon Zarezan, or the "Day of the Vine-Grower". Most of the village seemed to be there, and although our Bulgarian is still quite rudimentary, we did manage to have a few conversations with our fellow villagers.

Among the guests was this young lad and, while it's not one of the best portraits I've ever posted, I defy you to tell me that it didn't make you smile :)

I've spent the last couple of days wondering what to post to close out the year and then came across this entry on momentaryawe.com (run by my good friend Catalin Marin): his twelve favourite shots from 2009, one from each month. So, with credit to Catalin for the idea, here are my twelve favourites for the preceding year. Had I selected images from the year as a whole I suspect that there would be a couple of changes, and I also suspect that some of you would make different choices from each month, but when I looked back through the images I'd posted this year these are the ones that gave me most pleasure to produce.

As always, let me know what you think.

On a different matter: don't forget that there are just a few days left in which to snap up a 15% discount on our Photoshop tutorials. Further details here:

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

And finally: Happy New Year for 2010 :)

My apologies for the lack of both updates and new material, but I've been rather preoccupied over the last few weeks. As many of you know, Libby is back in the UK to give birth to our latest daughter, while I'm still out in Bulgaria with the kids. And while it would be an exaggeration to say that I've been worried to the point of not being able to lift a camera, I have been busy running the house and preoccupied with: wondering when our daughter will arrive; how Libby's getting on on her own; and so on.

Anyway, the waiting is about to come to and end as Libby is going into hospital tomorrow (Sunday 8th) for an induction. Our daughter isn't due until the 11th, but there have been a variety of complications, the net result of which is that both Libby and the docs have decided to hurry things on a bit. We had planned on a home birth – which would have been great as we could have kept in touch using Skype – but I guess I'll have to make do with text message updates and the odd phone call here and there.

So, think of me tomorrow, as I'm pacing around Bulgaria, while 2000 miles away Libby will be giving birth to our daughter. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly.

Oh, and if you're interested in seeing how things are going, I'll be updating my Facebook profile throughout the day.

http://www.facebook.com/chromasia

As for this shot: it's another grabbed street capture, taken in Venice a few weeks ago.

Update: our daughter was born at 16.45pm GMT on the 9th of November. It's only been a few minutes since I heard, and I don't know all the details yet, but both Libby and baby are fine :)

This is probably the last of the shots I'll be putting up from the wedding I shot in Venice a few weeks ago, and while it's not my favourite of the various ones I've posted, I am pleased with how it turned out as it was shot in less than favourable circumstances, i.e. back-lit, low light, and so on.

On a different matter: my apologies for not posting much recently, but as many of you know, I'm currently home-alone with the kids, while Libby is back in the UK waiting for our latest daughter to make an appearance. She's not due until the 11th of November, and they won't be able to fly back to Bulgaria for two weeks after that, so my updates might be rather infrequent between now and then.

I will be heading out to Dubai again though - November 19-22 - as I'm one of the instructors at the GPP Fotoweek event, alongside Bobbi Lane, Robin Nichols, David Tejada, and Chris Hurtt. It should be a great event, and if you're interested in attending, there's a full list of all the workshops here:

http://www.gulfphotoplus.com/fotoweekend-workshops.php

There's not much I can tell you about this one other than a) it was snapped as Tom and I followed the bride and groom around Venice, and b) I thought the guy had an interesting face and world-class eyebrows :-)

When I posted venezia #3 I mentioned that I trusted to luck with the exposure - mostly because I didn't have time to do anything else. With this shot though I decided to deliberately go for a more high-key image, by overexposing by +1 EV, and while I think I prefer the slightly moodier look of venezia #3, I also like this one too. Technically, and aesthetically, I think it's a bit weaker, but symbolically I think it's more interesting, i.e. they're walking towards a bright or unknown future.

I'd be interested to hear how you think the two compare, and which you prefer.

On a related matter, the second shot I posted in this series – venezia #2 – has been nominated for the Photo of the Year category of the 2009 Photoblog Awards. If you would like to vote for that image you can do so here:

http://vote.photoblogawards.com/photoblog.php?name=venezia-2

My own submission for that category was one of my favourite HDR shots from this year – BSC - Workington. If you'd like to vote for that one, the relevant page is here:

http://vote.photoblogawards.com/photoblog.php?name=bsc---workington

As those of you who have been visiting chromasia for some time will know it's rare that I post any street photography (other than individual portraits). There are two reasons for this. First: I can’t 'see' street shots in the same way that I see other subjects. For example, I can evaluate a landscape, or a washed up bit of rubbish on the beach, or a portrait, and have a good idea as to whether the shot will work. With street photography though, it all feels much more random, probably because there's often a lot more going on. As such I often find myself taking this type of shot, but rarely end up liking the results.

The second, related reason, is that once I've taken this type of shot I find it very hard to judge which ones work, and which ones don't. For example, there are aspects of this one that I like - particularly the interaction between the parents and the child - but I don't have any real sense of the merit of the image as a whole (or its lack of merit).

Anyway, given that my reaction to this one was reasonably favourable I thought I'd post it and see what you think.

While I think I prefer the previous two shots I posted of the bride and groom from the wedding I shot in Venice recently, I like this one too. It was taken just before we started our walk around Venice,and was grabbed as the bride and groom were saying a temporary goodbye to their guests, and while I would have preferred a less cluttered shot (table legs in the foreground, people in the background), it was either grab the shot or miss the moment. I'm glad I chose the former.

Of all the shots I took of the bride and groom during our walk through Venice, I think that this is one of my favourites – aesthetically, because it captures a moment that I think was definitely worth recording, and technically, because it was shot in circumstances that I would normally avoid, i.e. the dynamic range of the original scene was quite high. As such I was going to lose either some shadow detail, or highlight detail, or both. In this case, as you can see from the original image (linked below), I lost the shadow detail:

.../archives/venezia_3.php

At this point I'd love to be able to say that this was intentional, i.e. that I deliberately exposed the shot in this way, but I was rushing to catch up with the bride and groom at this point so snapped a few frames as they walked down the alley. Fortunately, it worked out.

In terms of the post-production: this one was relatively straightforward, i.e. I cropped the image, cloned out a few distracting elements, converted the image to black and white using the channel mixer (as described in this tutorial), added a fairly strong Curve that clipped the highlights (resulting in the loss of detail in the stonework in front of the bride and groom), and then toned the image using a second Curve (as described here).

As I mentioned when I posted my previous entry I shot a wedding in Venice at the weekend with Tom Wicky. Tom shot the bride getting ready in the morning then we both shot the ceremony (at Venice Town Hall). Once the ceremony had finished Tom and I took a 45 minute walk through Venice with the bride and groom: Tom shot the 'formal' portraits while I concentrated on recording the less formal aspects of our stroll. I haven't had a chance to work through all of them yet, but did like this one.

As I mentioned when I posted the first shot from the wedding I photographed recently, I was co-shooting with Tom Wicky. The biggest and most obvious benefit of have two photogs at a wedding is that the pressure is reduced, i.e. your not solely responsible for getting each and every shot. A related benefit is that while one of you shoots the main shot, the other can pursue other angles. In this instance, as Tom was photographing the bride getting into the car after the ceremony - from the obvious, and easiest angle - I was shooting between the gap left between the hinged side of the door and the car body. With the benefit of hindsight I wish I'd moved an inch or two to the left, but I am pleased with how this one turned out.

If you're interested, the original was converted to black and white (as discussed in this tutorial), then toned with a curve (as discussed here).

I may be wrong, but I suspect that this one won't create quite such a polarised response as my last wedding shot ;-)

One of the things I enjoy most about wedding photography, which is probably the thing that would slowly drive me insane if I shot more than three or four a year, is that you rarely have time to think – it's just a question of doing your best to get the shot. The net result of operating at this speed though is that it's often difficult to get the perfect image. Take this one for example: while I'm pleased with the end result it would have been better if a) the focus had been about two inches further forward (the bride's face is a bit soft), and b) I'd used a slightly higher shutter speed (the motion blur of the bridesmaid's hair is a bit of a distraction). Other than that though, I am pleased with this one.

And if you're interested, the post-production techniques I used for this image are covered in my Portraits: part one tutorial.

This is the second of the wedding shots I'll be posting, taken at the hotel before we all left for the ceremony. From left to right we have the two best men, the groom, and the usher. And I would write more, but after the last few days of running round like a headless chicken I'm just about ready to collapse in a heap and sleep for a week.

I flew back to the UK on Saturday to shoot a wedding in Wimbledon with Tom Wicky. Fortunately the wedding didn't start until lunchtime on Sunday, so I had a bit of a chance to catch my breath in the morning, but from lunchtime onwards we shot through till about 9.30pm. Between us we have 3580 shots, and I'll probably share a few of them over the next few days. This one is definitely one of my favourites: a candid portrait of one of the best men and his son, taken during the reception.

On a more technical note: if you've followed my recent entries you'll know that my trusty 1Ds Mark II died recently, so I replaced it with a 5D Mark II. And I'm extremely glad that I did as I would have really struggled with some of the shots at the wedding. The ceremony took place in a rather nice church in Wimbledon, but the light was terrible. For example, even at f/2.8 and 1/60s (the slowest I dare go with my 70-200mm) I needed to use ISO 1600. If I'd been using the 1Ds Mark II the images would have looked awful – anything above ISO 800 is problematic with that sensor – but the 5D Mark II files look great. There is some noise, but it's negligible and easily fixed.

Having finished the wedding I drove up to Preston on Monday morning to do some one-to-one training with Danny Allison, which we finished off this morning, and now I'm busily copying files to my server in Blackpool before flying back to Bulgaria tomorrow afternoon. All in all it's been a busy, but very enjoyable few days :-)

This is my last shot from my recent trip to the 2009 Gulf Photo Plus training event, and like the previous seven shots in this small series it was shot down in the Souk. Unlike the others in this series though, this one is a pseudo-HDR image, not because I especially wanted to produce an HDR-like image, but because the original a) lacked detail, and b) was slightly over-exposed. If you're interested you can take a look at the original here:

.../archives/souk_portrait_8.php

And you can find out more about creating pseudo-HDR images from a single RAW file here:

.../tutorials/online/hdr3_info.php

In this instance, running the image through Photomatix Pro enabled me to really bring out the detail in the original and, because I used reasonably conservative settings, the end result still looks fairly natural.

As always, let me know what you think.

As promised, here's the second shot of the construction work on the Nasa Multiplex building in Dubai. As I mentioned, I think I prefer the previous one I posted – it was a bit more graphic than this one – but this shot does convey a better sense of scale, not least in terms of demonstrating that it's a long way down from the 82nd floor :)

As always, let me know what you think.

As I also mentioned, between now and the end of July 2009 we are offering a 15% discount on our tutorials. Further details here:

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

This is a shot of one of the students who took part in my landscape course at the recent GPP Training event.

We had a great storm last night, here in Bulgaria - the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled - but I was so engrossed in watching it that I didn't manage to take any photographs. Unfortunately the storm was followed by a 16 hour power cut - apparently the transformer in our village was damaged - after which I discovered that our router was fried. So tomorrow I'll be buying a new router and either a surge protector or UPS as I believe that storms are quite common at this time of year.

As for this shot: it was taken at the new mosque in Abu Dhabi during my recent trip to Dubai.

If you're reading this round about the time at which it was posted Craig and I will now be somewhere between Calais (France) and Bucharest (Romania). If we've made good time we'll be an hour or so into Romania, if not then we'll be heading towards Szeged – a town on the Hungarian side on the Hungary/Romania border, and will head down through Romania tomorrow. Apparently, Romania is not a country that's good to drive through in the dark as the roads can be quite bad at times; i.e. they have the sort of potholes that you really don't want to hit at speed ;)

As I mentioned on Monday, Libby will probably be tweeting our progress, so feel free to follow her on twitter. Her twitter name is @libby_chromasia.

As for this shot: it's another portrait shot down in the souk in Dubai, taken on the same trip as this one and this one.

Let me know what you think, and I'll get back to you later this week when I sort out my internet access in Bulgaria.

One of the biggest problems I faced when shooting in Dubai was the almost constant haze – caused by the sand from the desert, construction work, and so on – and for most of the shots I've posted I've done my best to eliminate it. In this instance though, it wasn't a problem; i.e. the soft diffuse background works well. And you may remember that I also posted another football shot a while ago. That one was taken 12 minutes before this one.

On a totally different matter: this one was auto-posted as I'm currently on route to pick up Craig, after which we're heading down to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais: the first leg of our drive to Bulgaria. I'm going to schedule another shot to go up on Wednesday, and one more on Friday, but I should be back online by then.

In the meanwhile, if you want to know how Craig and I are getting on, I'm sure that Libby will be tweeting some updates as we drive down through Europe. Her twitter name is @libby_chromasia.

This is another portrait shot down at the souk in Dubai, shot on the same trip as this one. In some ways, I think I prefer this one – it's certainly more striking – but I do have a soft spot for the old gentleman in my previous shot, not least because I've now photographed him two years in a row.

Anyway, I don't think there's too much else I can tell you about this one other than that it was converted to black and white using the channel mixer (as described in this tutorial) then contrast adjusted and toned with a Curve. I also added a bit more light to his eyes (as described here) using a masked Curve, but that was about all that was done to this one.

As always, let me know what you think.

I wasn't intending to post this one, but Kevin asked an interesting question when I posted my last shot that got me thinking. He said:

"I'd love to hear how you (and others) approach these strangers (particularly in foreign countries) to take their pictures. I'd be afraid to do it as I would think it an imposition. How do you phrase the question?"

What this question made me realise was that the various portraits that I've posted that were shot in the Souk naturally lead to that question; i.e. I've portrayed these guys in a way that makes them look a bit unapproachable. This shot, on the other hand, shows this guy in a different light, and was taken just after my good friend Bobbi Lane had been shooting him. If you take a look at the front page of Bobbi's website you will notice that all of the people are smiling, as was this guy while she was photographing him.

In terms of answering Kevin's question, this is important for two reasons. Firstly, this guy wasn't as nearly unapproachable as my last shot implies, and second, people will react to you in the way that you react to them. In my case, I guess I often look reasonably serious when I approach people, and I get a reasonably serious response, while Bobbi's approach is quite different. I guess the bottom line here is that a portrait is as much about the relationship you establish with your subject as it is about them, and it's made me realise that I probably need to lighten up a bit ;)

While Dubai is famous for it's rather large buildings, malls, and indoor ski resort, some of my favourite places to visit are the souks (or markets). These are located on either side of the creek and you can cross between the two on an abrah (a small wooden dhow).

When I was there in 2008 I took this shot, a portrait of one of the many old guys who spend their days sitting and chatting in the markets. When we went back there this year he was there again, just round the corner from where I photographed him last year.

I have another three portraits from the same trip that I'll post at some point soon.

There was a great line up of photographers at this year's GPP training event – Joe McNally, David Hobby, Drew Gardner, Vincent LaForet, Zack Arias, Carol Dragon, Chase Jarvis, Cliff Mautner, Asim Rafiqui, Chris Hurtt, Bobbi Lane, and Robin Nichols – and while I'd met many of them at last year's event, there were a few new faces this time round.

One of the newbies was Zack Arias, the (multiple) subject of this shot. If you're not familiar with his work, take a look at his website, and be sure to check out a video I linked in a previous post – Transformed – it's a great piece of work. You might also want to check out his OneLight DVD. I'm just working my way through it at the moment and would definitely recommend it if you need any help/inspiration on how to use a single strobe to light your subjects.

As for this image: I didn't set out to produce a composite portrait, but was shooting Zack in the Souk as he was filming with his Flip Mino. I didn't think that any of them would be especially great (I was snapping rather than thinking about what I was doing), but when I looked through them I realised that while none of the individual shots were particularly good, they might work well as a set. Part of the reason I was prompted to think of a composite image was because Zack shot the group portrait at GPP this year using a single strobe to light 29 people dotted around a dark auditorium - one by one. If you're interested, the final image and Zack's description of the process are here:

http://www.zarias.com/?p=340

As always, let me know what you think.

I've had a really great time in Dubai this year - working with a good client, teaching at Gulf Photo Plus with an amazing group of photographers, and meeting many new friends - but it's time to go home now as I miss my wife and kids. The good news is that I only have one more meeting to go to tomorrow then fly home on Thursday :)

I've got quite a few more shots to post over the next week or so - a couple of HDRs, quite a few portraits, and a couple of experimental shots - but as my thoughts are currently pointing towards home I thought this was the most relevant to post tonight - a shot of a young girl taken down at the mosque in Abu Dhabi. My shots of the mosque are a spectacular failure, despite it being a really cool place, but I'm pleased with how this one turned out.

As for the post production: it was converted to black and white using the Channel Mixer (as described in my Black and White: part one tutorial), then contrast-adjusted and toned with a Curve.

I may post another shot before I leave Dubai, but it's more likely that I'll put something up when I get back to the UK. In the meanwhile, let me know what you think of this one.

This is one of those shots that nearly didn't happen, not because I didn't shoot it - clearly I did - but because the way in which I approached it simply didn't work.

This is a sculpture in the Gate Village (a part of the DIFC) and I decided that the most effective/dramatic way to shoot it would be from the ground, looking up. The problem with this idea though was that the sky was about 3 stops brighter than the sculpture. One solution would have been to have thrown some flash onto the sculpture, but this would have caused two problems. First, any light would have been visible in the metal spheres, and second, I'm crap at lighting at the best of times :)

So, the obvious solution, or so I thought, was to shoot an HDR sequence. The problem with that idea though was that the different sections of the sculpture move - a bit like a very large 'executive toy' - and it was a windy day. I shot it anyway, and hoped I could fix any motion artefacts when I processed it. I couldn't; i.e. neither Photomatix or FDRTools could produce an image that came anywhere close to looking OK.

I was about to give up on it when I realised that the solution I was trying to use was much more complicated than the problem required; i.e. I just needed more light on the sculpture - I didn't need a 32 bit image, tone mapping, and the whole HDR process. The much simpler solution, which didn't occur to me until after an hour or two, was to blend two of the exposures - the -3 EV shot for the sky, and the metered exposure for the sculpture - using a very rough mask to blend the two images. If you're interested I've posted both originals (the -3EV then the metered exposure), the mask, and the blended image here:

.../archives/the_structure_of_things.php

And if you want to follow up on this technique you can take a look at my Creative workflow: part one tutorial which covers this technique in a lot more depth.

Anyway, I guess the short version of the above is that one of the things that can get in the way of producing a good image is having a mindset that just doesn't work for the image/scene at hand; i.e. I've been writing about HDR for months, so that was the approach that first came to mind. By the same token, if I was more used to lighting the scenes I shoot, I probably would have tried to use flash, reflectors, and so on - which would have taken quite a while to set up, and would have generated its own set of problems. The actual solution though, when it finally did occur to me, was much simpler and quicker - I just wish I'd thought of it sooner :)