Despite the fact that yesterday was the longest day of the year the weather has been quite atrocious, and when we took the kids down to the sea-front this afternoon it was all we could do to stop them blowing away. Harmony (who's now five) just about managed to stay on her feet, but if I hadn't had hold of Finley he would have been blown over on several occasions.

As for this shot: it's a view you've probably seen before on chromasia, and while I'm normally quite happy to suffer for my art, today was not one for hanging about taking photographs :-)

If I had anything else to post I wouldn't put this one up, but as I mentioned at some point last week, this is an extremely busy month and my time for taking photographs has decreased to virtually nothing. Next month will be a lot better – and I have a lot of new ideas I want to pursue – but right now I'm barely finding time to do the absolute essentials, let alone find time to take any photographs.

Anyway, despite the fact that I probably wouldn't normally post this one, I thought you might find it interesting for the same reason that I shot it; i.e. it was a test shot I took with my new Canon G9 to test the macro mode: and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised, both in terms of the sharpness of the foreground and the smoothness of the out-of-focus background.

Given that my previous image received a mixed, though mostly positive response I'd be interested to hear what you make of this one. Like the previous one, it's an HDR, constructed from a seven shot bracketed sequence using Photomatix Pro, but while the last one had almost CGI feel to it, this one is a lot less intense.

That said, if you didn't like the last one because it's an HDR, you're unlikely to like this one any better ;-)

Nonetheless, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as this is a technique that a) I still find fascinating, and b) will probably do quite a lot more of in the future.

My apologies for not posting recently but things have been hectic over the last few weeks; i.e. far too much work to do, and not enough time to blog - and it's going to be much like that for the rest of this month. And in the scale of things that's a lot better than having no work, but right now I'd settle for somewhere between the two extremes :-)

Anyway, I found some time to wander down to the North pier today and decided to shoot some HDRs. Most of them probably won't work out (for one reason or another) but I like this one, not least because it's a completely over-the-top use of this technique.

As always, your thoughts and comments will be gratefully received.

Oh, and I haven't posted the EXIF data but all the shots were taken at 16mm and I used a seven shot sequence with a 1 EV spacing between them.

This is an HDR of Blackpool's North Pier, constructed from a bracketed sequence of seven shots (1 EV spacing), tone mapped with Photomatix Pro. If you're interested, the fourth shot in the sequence (i.e. the metered exposure) is here:

.../archives/the_evening_gathers.php

I shot the sequence yesterday evening, just before meeting up with a film crew from the BBC programme Inside Out. They were shooting footage for a programme on piers in the North West of England and had googled Fleetwood Pier. After finding some of my shots of that pier they asked if they could interview me. Anyway, we spent about 40 minutes strolling up and down the beach, chatting about the local piers and trying to look as though we weren't half frozen to death. It was fun, despite the near Arctic conditions.

If you're interested, the programme airs at 7.30pm on the 2nd May, but it's a regional programme so you'll only be able to watch it live if you live in the North-West of England. I think it will be available on the Inside Out website shortly afterwards though.

On a totally different matter: I've been involved with helping out with the development of an OS X screensaver/desktop feed, that feeds images from chromasia and Daily Dose of Imagery to a folder on the client's computer. If you're interested in taking a look the script and instructions are here:

www.cneophytou.com

And finally: this entry should be automatically posted at 7pm tomorrow, round about the time I'll be clearing customs after a two-leg flight to somewhere considerably warmer than Blackpool. All being well I'll post something on Monday and let you know where I am.

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.

My apologies for not posting anything over the last couple of days but I've been finishing off the first part of a two part tutorial on HDR images. Anyway, I'm pleased to say that it's now finished, and if you're interested you can read more about it on either our main tutorials page or here:

../tutorials/online/hdr1_info.php

As for this one: don't be fooled by your first impression – it's not quite what it seems.

If I had any shots in reserve I might not have bothered posting this one as I'm not entirely happy about the composition, especially the way in which one of the kiosks on the pier is obscured by the telegraph pole in the foreground, but I really couldn't find a position that worked better. That said, I'm sure there probably was one.

Anyway, I probably wouldn't have bothered with the shot but I'm trying to document the ongoing restructuring of our seafront – albeit rather intermittently – and as I don't imagine that these poles will be there for all that long I didn't want to miss the opportunity.

This is probably my favourite of the shots I've posted in recent weeks.

Some of you already know this – as you mentioned it in the comments on yesterday's entry – but for those of you who don't …

I'm really pleased to announce that chromasia was voted the Best European Photoblog and was a finalist in the Photoblog of the Year and Most Popular Photoblog categories in the 2007 Photoblog Awards. Thanks to all of you who voted for me in 2007, congratulations to all the other winners, and if you would like to vote for me again in 2008 (which I would very much appreciate), you can do so here:

    http://vote.photoblogawards.com/photoblog.php?title=chromasia

As for this shot: Rhowan and Harmony found some balloons at the side or the road as we walked to the beach. They spent the rest of the trip waving them around, chasing them, and racing them across the tidal pools on the beach.

And it's been a while since I posted an original, so if you're interested you can take a look at the rather flat original here:

.../iblog/archives/nobody_can_be_uncheered.php

Watching children grow up is a strange business. One minute they’re a babe-in-arms and the next, despite their continued dependence, they’re striding off confidently into the world, seemingly without hesitation.

First of all, thanks for all the great comments on yesterday's shot. It was good to finally find the time to produce something worth posting, but even better to hear it was well liked.

As for this one: it's been a while since I posted a keep out shot. I've been keeping an eye out for them, but there's only so much you can do with a series of old number plates on chains, so I haven't managed to get too many that I'm happy with this year. This one though, I like: mostly because of the upside down sign, and the hook hanging in mid-air, but also because it works well with the rest of the scene ;– i.e. it reads like a commentary on Blackpool in the wintertime ;-)

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'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.

I was down on the seafront this evening, just as the sun went down, and the light was fabulous. This is probably the only shot I got that's worth posting, and it's a bit soft – I should have dropped to f/5.6 and shot at 1/80th – but it does capture some of the beauty and stillness of the evening.

I don't think this one is in quite the same league as under the north pier #1, but it's possibly on a par with under the north pier #2, and like both those shots this is an HDR produced with Photomatix Pro (and a lot of fiddling around with Photoshop).

Ok, so here's number two. In many ways I think that this is my favourite of the three though I suspect that tomorrow's will attract greater comment :-)

Oh, and this is definitely one that looks best with the black theme.

This one isn't hugely different to yesterday's, but I thought it was worth putting up. Again, it's taken from Fleetwood, facing south towards Blackpool with Blackpool Tower on the left. In this shot though you can also make out the North Pier, just appearing from the haze.

In some ways, I think I prefer this one to yesterday's (perhaps because of the more restricted colour palette), but I suspect that the majority of you will probably go for yesterday's, not least because the figures in yesterday's shot add more than the ones in today's. Anyway, let me know what you think.

This one was taken from much the same location as yesterday's; i.e. between Central Pier and North Pier, and I'm reliably informed that this is a flock of starlings. On a technical note: it might have been better if I'd used a slightly faster shutter speed than 1/30, but it does convey some of the movement as they wheeled and dived around the pier. They were quite amazing to watch.

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.

I'm not sure that this is quite as effective as yesterday's, and I'm sure that it would definitely be better as a print than at this resolution, but I do like it nonetheless.

Well, yesterday's was pretty much a straight shot; today's isn't ;-)

This is another HDR (high dynamic range) image, and I do appreciate that these aren't to everyone's taste but, as you know, I do quite like vaguely surreal images.

Like this shot, this one was an attempt to produce a visually simple shot but, as with my previous effort, I'm not sure it's entirely successful. What I do like is the various textures, but I'm not 100% convinced by the compostion. Maybe it's ok ... I'm just not sure.

As always, let me know what you think.

Oh, and this is the last of the auto-posted entries: I'll be back tomorrow.

I did intend to pick up a couple of points from the discussion over the last couple of days, but Rhowan and Finley haven't been particularly well over the last couple of days so we've now had three nights in a row where we didn't get enough sleep: one consequence of which is that I'm not feeling particularly erudite this evening.

So, without further ado, here's this evening's shot. This was taken on the planet Venus earlier this week with Canon's new 128 gigapixel 'Truthomatic' camera. As you'll all be aware, the 'Truthomatic' has no user-configurable setting, produces files in a proprietary format that prohibits even the most gentle post-processing; yet nonetheless produces images that are, to all intents and purpose, 99.5% true. The Truthomatic mark II, expected later this year, will raise the truth/reality threshold to 99.999% which, claim Canon engineers, will result in images that are entirely indestinguishable from reality. So, that's it, no more digital art for me ;-)

You'll be pleased to hear that I have a straight shot to put up tomorrow, but in the meanwhile here's one more HDR image. This one is a bit more typical of the genre and demonstrates quite clearly how these images have a much more evenly distributed tonal range than normal photographs yet the local contrast (the red sign for example) is still quite pronounced. Take a look at the histogram for this image and you'll see what I mean.

Also, a few of you have asked me about the workflow for these shots: basically, I convert the RAW files in ACR, import them into Photomatix, generate the HDR file, play around with the tone mapping setting until the image looks reasonably close to what I'm after, save the tone mapped file, and finally, open this image in Photoshop for final editing (Curves, colour adjustment, noise reduction, and so on).

On another matter: John is having big problems with the domain registration for johnwashington.co.uk at the moment but you can still access his site at the following address:

washingtonmedia.co.uk

Hopefully he'll be up and running at his usual address shortly.

First of all, thanks for all the comments on yesterday's shot. As I write this there are 71 comments, which must be something of a record for an image put up on a Friday ;-)

Anyway, here's effort number two, and while this might not be as immediately striking as yesterday's, I do like this one too. Technically, this one is better. I mentioned yesterday that I thought the original images weren't particularly well aligned, and I initially thought the same about this one. However, the actual problem was to do with chromatic aberration – that C1 Pro doesn't correct. The seven initial images for this one (with shutter speeds of between 1/8th and 1/500th) were converted with Photoshop and corrected for chromatic aberration prior to being combined into an HDR file. The net result is that the initial image was much cleaner and sharper.

As always, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

This is a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image, created with Photomatix. HDR's are composite images that utilise several different exposures of the same scene (in this case, six exposures at f/5.6, between 1/15th and 1/500th) to create an HDR image to which you then apply a tone curve. I'm not sure I understand quite how it all works, but basically the software works to create areas of local contrast within a scene rather than applying a uniform contrast across the image.

If you're interesed in reading up about this follow some of the links from the HDR flickr pool. I intend to shoot a lot more of these so will put up more information as and when I get my head around how it works. For the time being though, I do like the result.

As for this attempt: technically, it could be better, especially since the original images are slightly out of alignment with one another (tripod on sand, windy, and so on), but I just love the surreal effect. I wish it didn't take quite so long to postprocess though – this one took around three hours from start to finish ;-)

Oh, and I first came across this sort of image on LONDONRUBBISH.

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

CJ made an interesting point yesterday:

"... intent doesn't need to happen at the time the shutter was tripped. In the same way that other visual arts can mature their final results over a period of time, I think photographers need to realise that the shutter moment is not the be all and end all."

Bearing this in mind I went through the 87 images in my processed folder – the ones I've converted from RAW files, but not been able to work up into something worth posting here – with a view to thinking them through again. I'm still pretty much sure that 86 of them have very little merit, but I said the same about this one when I first processed it; yet today I've put it in my portfolio. In this instance, the 2x1 crop is irrelevant; i.e. it's not that that makes the shot, rather it's that I saw something in this shot that I simply failed to see previously. All the more odd given that this was taken on Rhowan's birthday, and if you read the comments that accompany the entry I put up that day you'll see that I didn't think there was any merit to any of the shots that I took that day. This time though, it took me about ten minutes to post-process, and I love it, whereas last August I didn't think it was even worth opening in photoshop.

So, thanks CJ: I may well have missed this one had it not been for your comment.

Oh, and if you happen to check out the EXIF data below, don't even ask why I chose those particular settings as they make no sense to me either ;-)

I'm not too sure what you'll all make of this one as I suspect that my liking for it is more to do with the story I've chosen to attach to it, referenced by the title, rather than anything to do with the image itself; but as always, let me know what you think.

And thanks for all the comments on yesterday's shot. Look out for a repeat shot this summer of a pair of suntanned legs in stilettos :-)