A couple of days ago I mentioned that I'd been up to Fleetwood to shoot some HDR sequences, and that none of them had worked out, but I finally managed to sort out one of them. The reason I said that I didn't think that any of them would work is that I initially tried to process them using Photomatix Pro, but just couldn't get rid of the halos around the various struts and ironwork.

So, having failed with Photomatix, I thought I'd try a version using FDRTools and, as you can see, it's done a pretty good job. There were some HDR artefacts that needed correcting, and some minor haloing in some parts of the image, but on the whole I think it's done a pretty good job. There are still some minor areas of the image that I think could do with a bit more work, but I ran out of editing time today.

Anyway, this is a shot of the underside of Fleetwood Pier (as was this one). It was constructed from a seven shot sequence, all of which were taken at f/11.0 with a shutter speed range of 1/640s for the darkest shot to 1.6s for the lightest. To give you an idea of the dynamic range of the original scene, here's a straight conversion of the metered exposure:

.../archives/under_fleetwood_pier_2.php

As always, let me know what you think.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 an HDR of the underside of Fleetwood pier, created using three bracketed exposures. Well, to be accurate, it's mostly an HDR, but I used the sky from the underexposed original image as I felt that the sky in the HDR image was too contrasty and noisy.

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

I had planned to shoot some more shots of the stranded ferry Riverdance today, but I was out of town for most of the afternoon and by the time I got back the weather was terrible, so I've posted another shot of Fleetwood pier, taken at the same time as this one.

The weather report is good for tomorrow, and low tide is at around 4pm, so I'll try and get some shots from the north of the ferry in the afternoon sun: providing the coast guard aren't being too zealous about excluding people from the beach.

My apologies for not posting anything last night but I was busy finishing off our latest tutorial, Digital workflow: part one.

As for this shot: it was taken on the same trip as the previous three that I've put up, and while it isn't quite as striking, or as unusual, I'm pleased with how it turned out. And in case you're wondering, the toning was done in LAB Color mode.

This is the second of the long exposures I mentioned yesterday, and of the three (maybe four) that I'm going to put up I think this is probably my favourite.

Here's another one from the archives – taken just over three years ago – and I have no idea why I didn't post this one at the time.

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.

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.

This one was taken about about 15 yards to the right and a minute before yesterday's. Again, it's an HDR constructed with Photomatix Pro using three bracketed exposures.

Let me know what you think of it.

Oh, and if you're interested we have 150 signed and numbered calendars for sale. Full details are available on our store page:

    http://www.chromasia.com/store.php

Update: I probably won't be posting any new material until Saturday or Sunday as I've run out of time to shoot anything new or raid the archives. I'm photographing a friends wedding on Friday though, so may get something up on Saturday, but if not I'll try and get something posted over the weekend.

At some point in the not too distant past Fleetwood pier was probably a thriving tourist destination. These days it's looking a little the worse for wear, as this shot and tomorrow's will testify.

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 have two more shots from my trip to Germany that I'll put up, but I thought I'd post this one first. It was taken this morning and is a view of Blackpool's South Pier taken from Central Pier.

You may remember this view from this shot.

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:

.../archives/caught_in_the_middle.php

I've been struggling for inspiration recently, so rather than attempt something new I revisited one of my favourite haunts today – the pier at St. Annes.