This is the last shot I'll be posting from my recent trip to Barcelona, and it's definitely one of my favourites. It was taken from just across the road from the Olympic Stadium, a few minutes after the sun had dropped below the horizon, but I'm afraid that I can't identify the building on the horizon. Hopefully one of you will be able to enlighten me.

I got an email earlier today from a photographer who had stumbled across my beachcombing gallery. He said that he was pleased to have found it because he now felt like less of a nut photographing stuff that got washed up on his own beach :-)

And my reason for mentioning that is because I was working on this shot when his email arrived. It's clearly not a beachcombing shot, but it is a photograph of something damaged, and possibly abandoned. What I like about objects like these is that each of them has a story – normally one of damage or neglect – a trajectory that leads up to the point at which the shutter is pressed.

I have another 11 shots from my trip to Barcelona, that I was going to continue posting, but Fleetwood Pier burned down last night so we went up there this afternoon to see what was left. The leftmost side of the pier (built of iron and concrete) seems to have mostly survived the blaze, but the main pier building has been totally destroyed.

The pier was opened to the public in 1911, and while it isn't the most photogenic in the area I have managed to get some decent shots over the last couple of years. I'll try and get some more later this week and will post any that are worth seeing.

Despite the fact that we're based in the UK our biggest audience has always been in the US. For example, in the last 12 months we have had 878,731 US visitors - distributed across all 52 50 states: 136k from California, 67k from New York, 54k from Texas, 39k from Florida, and so on. By way of comparison, in the same period we have had 235k visitors from the UK, 108k visitors from Canada, 49k from France, and so on. In fact, according to Google Analytics we have had visitors from a total of 205 countries, including the Vatican and Antarctica, but the bottom line is that almost a third of you are based in the US.

So, on that basis: happy Independence Day :-)

I'm not sure that Finley will thank me for this one when he's older, but I couldn't resist posting it. He'd insisted on getting dressed up, because Harmony was wearing her princess costume and Stephanie wig (Stephanie is a character in Lazy Town, a children's TV programme) and decided he wanted to be photographed because Harmony had already had her photograph taken.

As with my previous shot, this was also taken with my new Canon G9, though this time I also had my 580EX II flash attached, bounced from the ceiling. It would probably have been better if I had switched to shooting in manual, as Finley's hands are a bit too blurred for my liking, but I haven't got the hang of manual mode with the G9, at least not when I've got an external flash attached - for some reason most of them end up over-exposed.

And in case you're wondering about the background: Rhowan and Harmony's bedroom has just been decorated; i.e. the walls have been painted and we've fitted some new laminate flooring. As you can see though, they're still missing their skirting board.

The thing I like best about event photography is that you have very little time to think, and very little control, especially when you're trying to work out the composition and lighting. Take this one as an example ...

One of the shots I needed to get was one that contained both the front of the North Pier and the performers, but we didn't have time to set up a specific shot so I needed to grab what I could while they performed. This one, as Libby and one of my older daughters pointed out, would have been better if the Pierrotters had been in front of the main sign – and I do have some shot from that angle – but this one is probably a stronger shot.

Anyway, it's the best shot I could get that contained all the elements, so let me know what you think.

First of all, thanks for all the thoughtful comments on my previous image – they're much appreciated – but there are a couple of points I'd like to pick up on one of them.

Garry and YETi both commented to the effect that they don't feel they should comment unless it will have some constructive impact. And clearly, from my perspective, constructive criticism is great – it helps me to move on – but I wouldn't want people to feel that that's all they should offer. Chromasia has been around for a long time, and as I write this there are 39722 comments containing over 1.3 million words – some of these are constructive, some are not, but all of them carry the various conversations forward.

There were also a number of interesting comments regarding the future of blogs, images on the web, and so on, but I need to think about these before I reply.

Anyway, on with the show :-)

The last few images I've posted were taken on a trip last week and, what with one thing and another I haven't been out since. So, I'm posting this one, a) because I don't have anything else worth putting up, and b) because I think it raises an interesting point. Personally, I really like this one – for reasons I'll come to in a minute – but I have to say that I don't think it works all that well at this resolution.

The things I like are the feathery detail of the structures on the pier, the couple walking arm-in-arm atop the new sea wall, the lone woman taking her dog for a walk, and a whole host of other small details – most of which are barely visible at this resolution. But what's the point in posting it if you can't see the things that make the shot?

My main reason (other than having nothing else to post) is that I wonder how acclimatized we have become to expecting an image to be eye-catching at the resolution we typically see on the web? Clearly, most photographs will look better when printed rather than previewed at a fraction of their original resolution, but does the fact that we spend most of our time looking at photographs on the web mean we have changed the way we see a photograph? I'm not sure I know the answer, but I do know that I very rarely post anything that doesn't work at this size.

Anyway, if you're interested, I posted another version of this image here:

.../archives/a_question_of_scale/index.html

As you can see, there's a lot more detail in the original image, and while you might not agree that "it makes the image", it does make for more interesting viewing.

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.

Increasingly I find myself tempted to crop my images to a more panoramic format, and almost posted a 4x1 crop of this one. In the end though, I decided that 3x1 was probably a better option.

And if you're interested, I've posted a 100% square crop of the segment of the image containing the person and dog. Before you look though, which direction did you assume they were walking in?

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Since writing my LAB tutorial I've been revisiting various shots that I've had laying around with a view to reprocessing them. This one, for example, was taken at the same time as this one, back in the summer of 2004. I didn't post it at the time, as it was quite similar to the one I did post, and I couldn't produce a colour version that I liked. As you can see, the original has a rather different palette:

.../archives/time_will_tell.php

What I didn't much like was the contrast between her pink cardigan and the yellow bucket. In this version, using LAB, the colours are much more muted and, in my opinion at least, it's a better image. As always, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Yesterday I mentioned that I had two shots of the sunset, and that I'd post the second today. This isn't it, I'll post that one tomorrow, but in the meanwhile I thought I'd put this one up. It's much the same scene as yesterday, taken a minute earlier, though the crop is 3x1 rather than 2x1 and the DoF is much greater. As with yesterday's I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

I'm not especially happy with this one, but it's something I've wanted to try for a while, and given that it took me ages to do I thought I'd post it. It was inspired by this shot on daily dose of imagery and was constructed from nine original images, stitched with Stitcher, then converted to a 'little planet' as per the instructions on daily dose.

Let me know what you think.

It doesn't seem like any time at all since Finley was born, but he's fast turning into a typical little boy: poking trees with sticks, playing in puddles, and generally becoming more and more independent and willful. It's good to see, but it's also quite scary how quickly time seems to pass.

As always, let me know what you think.

I've been meaning to try a panoramic shot for ages and am reasonably pleased with how this has turned out. It was created from seven originals taken at 17mm, using Stitcher. This does a much better job than Photoshop's 'photomerge' function, which is ok for shots with no distortion, but doesn't do a great job with wide angle shots; i.e. there's too much distortion.

Anyway, I'm not entirely convinced that I got the composition right – I probably should have shot the sequence in portrait rather than landscape format, and I think it needs a bit more space on the right – but other than that I think it's probably ok. Let me know what you think.

Oh, and if you're interested, there's a larger version of this image here:

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By popular request, here's one of Milly's shots from yesterday. She agreed with the crop, and the B&W conversion, but didn't like the added grain/noise. The version she preferred, which is very close to the original image, is here:

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I'm sure she'd be delighted if her version ended up being the preferred one ;-)

A few days ago I mentioned that I'd explain the baby project I've been working on in a bit more detail, not least because I'm aware that quite a few of you are getting more than a bit bored with baby shots ;-)

Anyway, the project we're working on is a book on baby photography, commissioned by Ilex Press. The book is organised into various sections, around 60% of which are primarily based around the photographs and some descriptive text (and organised into spreads such as 'family outing', 'brothers and sisters', 'first steps', and so on). The remainder of the book covers various post-processing and technical topics including things like 'on camera lighting', 'planning a shoot', 'converting to black and white' and so on, all of which include one or more photographs and a set of accompanying screen grabs. Today's image will be included in one of the technical sections entitled 'Favourite things montage'.

So far, we've managed to complete almost two-thirds of the book, and the final deadline is March 14th. In total the book will include over 300 images (photographs and screen grabs) and 30,000+ words of text, and we will have had around six or seven weeks to get it all together ... which isn't all that long. And that's why I haven't had time to shoot anything else.

Anyway, we're just about on target, though there may be some seriously late nights as we approach the 14th.

As for this shot: it's a composite of three images, all of which were produced in the same way.

I did think about buying one of those curved plastic studio platforms, but they're quite expensive, so this was shot using a large piece of white cardboard (which cost £1.99), held in a curve by two pieces of string (which cost 49 pence). The lighting was a combination of window light (from our north-facing bedroom window) and flash, bounced from the ceiling. All three images were adjusted to ensure that the background was pure white then they were combined into the final image.

For those of you in the "but this isn't a photograph!" camp, my apologies, but I felt like posting something a bit different today.

This one started life as a fireworks shot. Subsequent amendments include motion blurring the original and producing four different colour schemes on a seasonal theme: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

As always, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, not least because it's rare for me to post something quite this abstract.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

If you read my description of yesterday's shot you may already have seen this image as I linked to it within that entry. If so, don't worry about it. The reason I put this one up though is because it's the one I should have posted in the first place, rather than the three images as separate entries. As I processed them, I guess it was this mode of presentation that I had in mind; i.e. alongside one another, and I should have just posted them that way and linked the larger entries from the description.

Anyway, all your comments over the last few days have given me a lot to think about in terms of both shooting and presenting series of related shots, and as this approach is definitely something I'm going to be doing more of I do realise that I need to think through how best to present them first.

So, I think we'll draw a line under these ones, borders and all ;-)

It's been a long week, during which I've felt the need to prop my eyes open with matchsticks on several occasions, of which this shot is an example (minus the matchsticks) ;-)

Oh, and in case you're wondering about the post-processing: I used the channel mixer to 'extract' the blue channel (which radically darkens skin tones), added a vignette, and increased the contrast with the Curves tool.