I have a folder on my hard drive called 'possibles'. Shot's that I like but can't decide whether to blog. Normally, an image will sit in this folder for no more than a month or two – I'll either blog it, or delete it. This one though has sat there for almost two years, and I keep opening the file, then closing it again, remaining undecided as to whether to post it here.

So, rather than go through the whole process for another few years I thought I'd post it today. It's a shot of Libby and Tabby (our next to youngest) being photographed by Milly who was 13 at the time.

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10.57am on 21/4/10 Panasonic Lumix GF-1 20mm f/1.7 ASPH f/2.5 1/80 aperture priority +1/3 intelligent multiple 100 no RAW ACR Photoshop CS5 none no

This shot of Harmony was taken in August during a trip to Dryanovo monastery, a few miles from our village. Like a lot of photographs I take of the kids, it's a grab shot – a fleeting moment rather than a carefully planned image – hence the rather distracting background in the original. I did try to tone it down a bit, but couldn't come up with anything that looked convincing so decided to get rid of it altogether. I'm fairly sure it's a plausible edit, but let me know if you disagree.

This was taken in the Old Bazaar in Istanbul and even though I spent quite a few minutes shooting this scene it was only when I post-produced it that I spotted all the reflections. It' easy to miss one of them :)

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11.56am on 12/11/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 70mm f/2.8 1/80 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 400 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor

This shot was taken during a photo walk around Istanbul, as part of our recent Faces and Places Photo Tour to this fabulous city. I can't remember the exact area of the city we were in, but it was largely residential with a few small shops, winding streets, and a host of interesting things to photograph, including these two children – noses pressed up to the glass, watching the world go by their window.

As an aside, this image captures the flavour of Istanbul in a way that isn't apparent from the image itself. To explain ...

We'd been walking through the streets of this area, photographing the people we met, the buildings, the skyline, and pretty much everything that caught our attention. When I spotted these two children I automatically started shooting, as did several other people in our group.

After a couple of minutes an adult appeared behind the small girl, and from what followed I assume it was her mother. As soon as she appeared I realised what we were doing – taking photographs of small children in the privacy of their home. Had I been in the UK there would probably have been one of two outcomes: either an angry exchange with the parent regarding my invasion of their privacy or, worse, a discussion with the local police regarding the inappropriateness and illegality of my behaviour.

In this case though, rather than snatching the small girl away, she lifted her higher, waved, and smiled at us all as we photographed her children. In the scale of things it was a small event, but it neatly summarises my experience of Istanbul: one of the largest cities in the world, but also one of the most open and friendly that I've visited. I wish more of the world was the same.

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1.28pm on 11/11/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 68mm f/3.5 1/60 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 400 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor transformation

My apologies for the absence of recent updates, but it's been a really hectic few weeks.

Most recently I spent three days working on something that I thought would take a lot less time, a promo video for my forthcoming Creative Live workshop in October, which will be free to watch live online.

It's only a four minute video - a summary of my workshop and an invitation to take part, live in Seattle - and I thought we'd be able to produce it quite quickly. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it took ages to put together but I'm pleased with how it turned out. Take a look, especially if you can make it to Seattle on the 7th-9th October. If you can't, just enrol for the workshop and watch it live :-)

It also forced me to finally learn how to use video on my 5D Mark II. I don't know why, but it's just something I never seemed to find time to do, but it's actually easier than I expected (at least at a basic level), and a whole lot of fun. If you're interested, here's one of the unedited clips that I used in the video:

I've also been doing some additional work on our new member's gallery. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look at some of the great entries.

Libby and I have also been working on some new workshops and one-to-one training dates for 2012, including a Faces and Places workshop in Venice that I'll be running with Bobbi Lane. The final details haven't been finalised yet, but we'll be heading over there in February to photograph the carnival. If you'd be interested in finding out a bit more about it, email Libby and we'll keep you informed: libby AT chromasia DOT com

As for this shot, it's another iPhone shot, of Tabby and Harmony (in the background) playing around in our minibus. If I'd shot this using my 5D Mark II I probably wouldn't have bothered to edit it, mostly because there's a lot of missing details in the highlights. I did like the shot though, and after playing around with it in Photoshop for a while I'm happy with the end result.

As always, let me know what you think.

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2.59pm on 30/7/11 iPhone 4 ProCamera f/2.8 1/160 80 no Photoshop CS5 none 1x1

This is a shot of Harmony, taken recently during a walk through Veliko Tarnovo (Bulgaria), and while she looks quite cross, I think her expression was more to do with the fact that she was hot and tired rather than angry about anything.

And this is also the image I've used for this week's Mini-PSD as the toning is quite interesting - the tone was added by altering the curves for the blue and green channels.

In other news ...

I've been useless at adding new material recently, but I just haven't had time: I've been coding some new pages for our training site (we'll be posting some exciting announcements soon), Libby's back in the UK at the moment so I'm looking after all five of our younger kids, my parents came over for a visit, there was a plague of locusts, and the dog ate my homework. Other than all that though, things are pretty chilled :-)

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11.36am on 6/6/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 64mm f/5.6 1/40 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor

This is a shot of Tiggy, our youngest, taken at our local shopping mall a few days ago. She hasn't made too many appearances on the blog so far, but the older she gets the more she seems to like being photographed, so expect to see more shots of her soon :)

This is also the image I've used for this week's Mini-PSD. It's not an especially complex image – it was created using just four adjustment layers – but I think it neatly demonstrates that effective images don't necessarily require a complex sequence of steps to produce. The key to this one is the black and white adjustment layer, set to lighten her skin tones (without making her lips too bright), and brighten her eyes. After that it was just a matter of adding three curves: one (almost) global adjustment, another to slightly lighten the eyelashes above her eyes, and another to brighten the chair on the left side of the image.

Oh, and I also used Topaz's new InFocus plugin to sharpen her eyes. If you've take a look at the EXIF data you'll see that this was shot at f/2.8, so her eyes ended up being a bit softer than I would have liked. Once I'd run the image through InFocus though they looked a lot better. You probably won't be able to notice a great deal of difference at this resolution, but the high-res file looks a whole lot better.

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1.14pm on 1/6/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 59mm f/2.8 1/40 aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 Topaz InFocus minor

One of the post-production questions I'm often asked is "how do you know when to stop?", and there isn't an easy answer, at least not when you're relatively inexperienced. For example, when I first started blogging – back in the days when I was posting an image a day – I used to stop working on an image when I ran out of time. At that point I might not have created the best possible image or version, but I stopped and posted it anyway.

These days I can normally work my way through an image and end up with a version that I'm a) happy with, and b) fairly confident is better than the alternatives. On this occasion though I've worked through a whole range of alternatives, all of which I've liked, but none of which have really stood out as being noticeably superior to the others.

So, as an alternative to spending a good part of today reprocessing this one yet again, here's the 'cold' version. There was a black and white version (which I discarded because my previous shot of the same scene was in black and white), a warmer version (which didn't really fit with the overall mood I was trying to create), and a Lab Color version (which I couldn't get quite right), any of which you might have preferred, but it's Sunday and I'll probably end up in trouble with the 'powers that be' if I spend any more time working on this one rather than "doing something useful" ;-)

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5.31pm on 15/4/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 35mm f/1.4L USM f/1.4 1/250 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 2x1

I've been in something of a shooting rut lately. I've been taking shots that I've liked, but haven't been pushing myself, nor being especially creative, so thought it was about time for a change. So yesterday evening, when I took the kids up to the village playground, I put my 35mm lens on the camera and promised myself I'd only shoot at f/1.4. Predictably enough, given the very shallow depth of field at this aperture, most of my shots didn't work out.

I did get two that I liked though, this one and a variant of the same scene that I'll probably post on Monday. It's a shot of Rhowan drawing on an old blackboard that somebody had removed from the abandoned school next to the playground. I'm not sure which of the two I prefer, but am pleased with both of them. They were also a lot of fun to shoot so I think I'll leave the 35mm on the camera for a while :-)

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5.31pm on 15/4/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 35mm f/1.4L USM f/1.4 1/250 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 1x1

I have a folder of images on my laptop called 'possibles', into which I put images that I've worked on but am not sure about blogging: maybe the image just isn't very good from the outset, or I'm not happy with the way I've post-processed it, and so on.

In this case though I'm really not sure why I didn't post this one. It's a shot of Harmony, taken just after Milly had styled her hair, and while the original isn't anything particularly special I was happy with the post-production when I opened it up earlier today. I have tweaked it a bit – this version is a bit brighter than my original edit – but on the whole it's pretty much as I left it ... languishing in my 'possibles' folder.

As always, let me know what you think.

In other news ...

A couple of places have opened up on the two workshops I'll be running in Austin, Texas next month. I'm running a one-day HDR workshop (4th Feb) and a two-day workshop on Creating Dramatic Images (5th and 6th Feb). If you think you might be interested in attending either of them please take a look at the following page:

http://davewilsonphotography.com/workshops/

And if you have any questions about either workshop, just drop me a line.

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2.05pm on 20/5/10 Panasonic Lumix GF-1 20mm f/1.7 ASPH f/2.5 1/80 aperture priority +2/3 intelligent multiple 100 no RAW ACR Photoshop CS5 Bokeh transformed to 3x2

This was take about a minute later than the shot I posted earlier this month, and as you can see, his attention was starting to wander by this point :)

On a related note ...

If you missed my previous post, I'm going to be running a new class with PPSOP: The Art of Black and White Photography. If you click the previous link you'll see that the course covers: black and white conversion techniques; working with portraits; combining conversion techniques and selectively altering tonal range and contrast; and toning and colorizing your black and white images – all of which are techniques that I used to create today's image. Specifically, I blended a Channel Mixer conversion with a Hue/Saturation adjustment (to even out the tonal balance for the image as a whole), added a few masked curves (to lighten his eyes and alter the global contrast), and then used a Curve to add a very slight warm tone to the highlights.

And while I'll be discussing all of these techniques in The Art of Black and White Photography>, I've also covered them in my own tutorials, specifically: Portraits: part one, Black and White: part one and part two, and Toning Colour Images.

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3.07pm on 8/10/10 Canon 5D Mark II EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM 200mm f/5.6 1/320 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 1x1

Here's another image from Jane and Nik's wedding that I shot back in October. My favourite shot from the one's I've posted is still this one (the rather serious looking Italian uncle), but I'm pleased with this one too.

In other news: if you'd be interested in some one-to-one training (either at our Blackpool office or at your own location in the UK) – on photography, post-production, or both – I now have some confirmed dates when I'll be back in the UK to provide training:

Thursday 10th February
Friday 11th February
Saturday 12th February
Sunday 13th February

Thursday 24th March
Friday 25th March
Saturday 26th March
Sunday 27th March

If you think you might be interested please email me [djn1 AT chromasia DOT com] or Libby [Libby AT chromasia DOT com] for further details.

And finally, don't forget that our 25% discount offer on our Photoshop tutorials ends at midnight on the 7th. Further info here:

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

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3.06pm on 8/10/10 Canon 5D Mark II EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM 200mm f/5.6 1/160 aperture priority +1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

Here's another shot of the flower girl from the wedding I photographed in October. She was definitely cute :)

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2.31pm on 8/10/10 Canon 5D Mark II EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM 200mm f/5.6 1/250 aperture priority +1/3 evaluative 200 no RAW Lightroom 3 Photoshop CS5 none no

On some of my recent trips back to the UK I've had a couple of things to do, but have spent quite a lot of my time twiddling my thumbs or just wandering about taking photographs. This trip, however, is quite a lot busier: I got back on Wednesday, went clothes shopping on Thursday (which was hellish), photographed a wedding with Sheila Morris yesterday, and spent today delivering the first of two days 1-2-1 training. I've got Monday off, but have three morning training sessions next week, after which I fly back to BG with my good mate Craig.

As I'm sure you will have already worked out, this is the first of a number shots that I'll be posting from the wedding: the youngest of three flowergirls. She was definitely a cutey :)

I also have a couple more portraits that I'll be posting, and at least four shots from this morning's training session. I'll post the first of those on Monday.

This is the last of the shots I'll be posting from the wedding I shot recently with Craig: one of the cutest kids I've photographed in quite some time :)

Elsewhere ...

My recent interview with PhotoNetCast is now live:

.../photonetcast-52-talking-photography-with-david-nightingale.html

And I'm currently taking part in the inaugural game of HDR Tennis:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/HDR-Tennis/105060586224248

Here's another shot of Harmony and her new friend, taken about 20 minutes before my previous entry. As with that shot, you'll see that the original is quite dark. In this instance though, as I decided to fade out the background detail during post-production, I would have got away with a much brighter initial exposure.

This is a shot of Finley (left), Harmony (right) and a young boy that they both met at a barbecue we attended recently. As you can see, they had a great time :)

On a more technical note ...

If you've taken a look at the original image you will have noticed that it's quite a bit darker than this version. With the benefit of hindsight I think I probably should have shot a lighter version, and sacrificed some of the background detail, but at the time I decided to expose for the highlights and leave the rest to post-production. That said, the final image does work, but was a lot harder to process than it might have been; particularly in terms of retaining a natural looking tonal balance between the different areas of the image.

This one was taken on the same shoot as this one, but I didn't post it at the time as I didn't think it was sufficiently different to warrant a separate post. Since then though I've spent quite a bit of time working on different ways of toning my images. I haven't come to any firm conclusions - either about technique, or the end results - but I am reasonably pleased with the way that this one turned out.

Here's another portrait of Rhowan; the last of the shots I'll be posting from our recent holiday on the Black Sea coast. As with my previous image, the main change that was made to this one was in terms of altering the tone (as described in my Toning Colour Images tutorial). I also used quite a few of the techniques covered in my Portraits: part one tutorial, particularly in terms of lightening and bringing out the detail in her eyes.

As always, let me know your thoughts, particularly in terms of whether you think the toning is effective.

I've been playing around with my Lumix GF-1 over the last few days, especially in terms of shooting with the lens wide open (f/1.7), and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the shots I've been getting, in terms of both sharpness and bokeh. That said, this one could have been a bit sharper, but I think this is more to do with the fact that Rhowan was moving and I was shooting at 1/30s than anything to do with the lens. Anyway, technical discussion aside, I quite like this one :)