This is a shot of the Jumeirah Beach Residences taken from the lowest frond of the Palm in Dubai while I was running my Shoot The City, Day & Night workshop that I ran at the GPP Fotoweekend training event in November. It's also the image that GPP are using to advertise the next occurrence of this workshop at GPP 2012. If you think you might be interested in attending, take a look at all the workshops that will be running this year. It's always a great event, but this year's line-up is truly fantastic.

In other news, if you haven't had a chance yet, head on over and take a look at my new photography and post-production blog. There's only one post so far, detailing what I'm going to be including, but I've also asked for some feedback from you, particularly in terms of what you'd like me to include. So have a look at my first post and let me know what you think.

And finally, I have a few one-to-one training dates coming up – February 24th, May 17th and May 21st–24th. If you're interested, take a look at our events page and one-to-one training page for further details.

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6.00pm on 15/11/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 35mm f/9.0 30s manual n/a evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 16x9

Not exactly a festive shot, but it was taken on Christmas Eve :)

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11.18am on 24/12/11 iPhone 4 ProCamera f/2.8 1/200 80 no Photoshop CS5 Topaz Denoise 16x9

This was taken during the third day of our recent Faces and Places Photo Tour to Istanbul during a boat tour up the Bosphorus. I took quite a few shots during the trip, but this ended up being my favourite.

I've also added this shot as this week's Mini-PSD.

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5.57pm on 10/11/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM 16mm f/8.0 1/100 aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor

This is a shot of the coastguard station at Rossal Point near Fleetwood, a building I've blogged twice before, once in 2006 and then again in 2007. For some reason that I can never quite work out I find it difficult to photograph, possibly because it forces me to shoot along the coast or back towards the shore – when my natural inclination is to point my camera out towards the sea – but whatever the reason, I'm happy with how this one turned out.

As you'll see if you've taken a look at the original, the post-processing wasn't especially extensive, it was just a question of focussing the light onto the building and shore, balancing the contrast between the sky and the reflection, converting the image to black and white and then toning it using a curve.

On a different matter ...

This is the fifth entry I've posted using the Disqus commenting system and I think I've ironed out most of the initial kinks. If you do come across any problems though, in terms of functionality, usability, and so on, just let me know.

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9.26am on 15/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 59mm f/8.0 1/50 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor rotation

This is another image taken during the Creating Dramatic Images workshop I ran in Blackpool recently and one that I may well reference during my Dramatic Post-Production workshop that I'll be giving for Creative Live this weekend (Fri 7th - Sun 9th). If you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, it's a three day workshop, that's FREE to watch online. Let me know if you're going to be tuning in :)

And if you're interested, Creative Live have just published a blog post about my workshop here:

http://www.creativelive.com/blog/david-nightingale-how-did-he-create-image

Oh, and I've also added this shot as this week's Mini-PSD as there were a couple of interesting transformations: one to the lower section of the image (it was scaled upwards), and another to repair the mask around the railings.

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3.22pm on 17/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 24mm f/10.0 1/320 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor transformation

I still have quite a few shots from my recent trip to the UK, that I'll blog over the coming weeks, but I think that this one may turn out to be my favourite from the trip.

I'll also be posting some more from last week, taken while wandering around Bulgaria with Craig, but in the meanwhile here's one of his:

http://www.id7.co.uk/portfolio/archives/1010241900_clean.php

The Lumix GF-1 is a great camera for taking out when you don't want to lug the rest of your gear around, but one of the things I keep forgetting to think about is the 4x3 aspect ratio. The reason I mention this is that I often compose the shot using the LCD then subsequently decide that the image would look much better cropped to 3x2. Often, this isn't an issue - I just need to crop off the top or bottom of the image - but this wouldn't have worked for this shot as I would have needed to lose some of the T-shirt. So, instead, I stretched the right-hand edge of the image.

In other news: I published our latest Critique Slot Screencast a few days ago. If you're interested, take a look at the following link.

.../tutorials/online/critique_slot_screencasts.php

Here's my first shot for 2010, taken back in November when I was in Dubai – a shot of an old bicycle down at the Souk. In this instance the post-processing was reasonably straightforward other than that I combined two similar shots of the same subject to construct the final image: one for the main detail, and another to lighten and add texture to the background. If you're interested, both shots are here:

.../archives/ringing_in_the_new_year.php

And beyond that I don't have too much else to say today other than Happy New Year :)

If you were a visitor at around this time last year you will probably remember that I posted quite a few shots of the Dubai International Financial Centre (The Gate #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7). When I shot it last year I was working on a project for a local gallery, and thoroughly enjoyed the shoot, but I certainly didn't expect to be shooting it again this year.

A couple of months ago though the DIFC got in touch as they'd found my 2008 images and wanted to licence them. They also asked me to spend another three days shooting the building and the Gate Village (comprised of shops, restaurants and galleries). So I've spent the last fews days shooting, and have a couple of thousand images to work through over the coming weeks. I probably won't post quite as many as I did last year, as I'm hoping to shoot some personal material while I'm here too, but I did think that this one was worth sharing.

As with a lot of my recent stuff, it's a seven-shot HDR, but in this instance it was processed with FDRTools rather than Photomatix Pro.

As always, let me know what you think, even if it is to tell me that you're totally fed up with me posting HDR images :)

Over the next week or so I'll be posting at least five more shots of the DIFC, but most of those concentrate on the building itself. While I was there though I thought I'd shoot a few HDR self-portraits, of which this is the only one that worked out.

Interestingly, it was constructed using FDR Tools rather than Photomatix Pro. I've only had a quick chance to play with it, but it seems to produce more naturalistic results than Photomatix while being more flexible than Phtoshop's Merge to HDR facility. When I've had a chance to use it a bit more I'll let you know what I think.

I haven't posted the EXIF data, but the seven shot sequence was shot at 70mm, f/8.0, with a 1 EV spacing.

I went out for a while this afternoon, but the weather was terrible and I hardly got any shots that I like. In fact, I only got this one – the rest are just grey cold shots of a grey cold landscape.

This one though, I like and, in case you're wondering, it is a straight photograph (with a bit of tweaking here and there).

It's been a while since I posted any urban shots, and I have to say that I'm really pleased with this one. And as someone is bound to ask, here's the original:

.../archives/urban_dream.php

As you can see the final image is a bit of a transformation ;-)

On a partially related matter: the second of our online Photoshop tutorials went live today – Black and white: part one. If you're interested, there's more information on our tutorials page.

And finally, I was out with Craig Judd last weekend, who was up in Blackpool for some Photoshop training, and I'm pleased to say that he's started posting to his blog again. I'm sure that some of you will have seen his work - I'm pretty sure I've linked to him before - but if not, his site is here:

http://www.id7.co.uk/

You may find that his shot for today is a familiar sight :-)

Here's one of John taken on our recent trip to Fleetwood.

Update: my apologies for not posting for a few days, but the run up to Christmas has been rather hectic and I haven't had time to get my camera out of its bag, let alone take any photographs. Anyway, all being well I'll be back to the image-a-day thing fairly shortly, but in the meanwhile I hope you have a great time over Christmas and the New Year :-)

Update #2: it's ages since I posted anything, and I don't have anything to post now (having been struck down by a festive cold/cough of epic proportions), but I just wanted to wish you all a happy New Year. Have a good one :-)

I do have another couple of shots to put up from my trip up to Fleetwood with John at the weekend but I think this is probably my favourite. Well, either this one or the one I'll be putting up on Thursday. And like the shot I put up on Sunday (before anyone asks), this is an entirely natural reflection.

I managed to get out for an hour today, up to Fleetwood with John, and probably managed to get one or two shots that I'll put up. I suspect that this one may turn out to be my favourite.

I had hoped to put up a picture of Finley today as he fell asleep on the settee, snuggled up to all four of our cats. If the cats had all been asleep too, I might have got the shot, but they were far too interested in the camera to stay still long enough for me to get a decent shot ... which is a bit annoying. Next time Fin' has a nap I might drug the cats and drape them around him ;-)

Anyway, failing a 'young boy and his cats' shot, I raided the archives and found this one; a reflection of Blackpool Tower in a rather distorted shop window. A year ago, I would have loved this image – I had a big thing for reflections – but, for some reason or another, I'm not quite as keen on them anymore. What do you think?

I went back to the wrecks last night, with Paul, and what should have been a gentle stroll under the stars turned into something a little more adventurous ... to say the least. It was 11.30pm, and the tide was coming in as we were taking a shot of one of the boats.

We checked the tide times on Paul's web-enabled phone, and confirmed that high tide was 11.36pm. So, almost high tide, but we were getting our feet wet. We decided to climb aboard one of the boats I'd photographed before – wyre wreck #5 – and wait until the tide receded. We took a few shots and noticed that the tide was still rising – it was now about a foot deep around the boat. We pondered for a while, and it got deeper. At this point it was beginning to look as though we were stuck on the boat for a while.

When it started filling the bottom of the boat we decided we better climb onto what was left of the roof, Paul on one side, me on the other. We checked the website again and found out that the tide time were GMT, not British summertime; i.e. high tide was expected at around 12.36pm.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the tide came within three feet of the roof of the boat, by which point we were several hundred yards from the shore, and we didn't manage to get off again until 2.30am by which point we were frozen silly. Still, I did get this shot and we didn't have to call the coast guard, so all in all the trip probably counts as a success ;-)

Oh, and I haven't put up the EXIF data but this was taken at 17mm (or thereabouts) and was a four minute exposure at f/5.6.

I did go out this evening to shoot some new material (including some twilight HDR's) but I haven't processed them yet and suspect, given that it was blowing a gale and I was shooting at relatively low shutter speeds, that they're not likely to be a great success. So, in the absence of anything else to put up, here's another one I shot at the Pleasure Beach the other evening.

First of all, thanks for all the great comments on yesterday's shot, they were much appreciated.

As for this one: I've been undecided about it, mostly for technical reasons. It's comprised of four shots and all were underexposed by at least a stop, and all of them are noisy, but the more I've looked at it, the more I like it.

It's still technically quite weak, but, for me at least, her expressions are worth recording. The four shots were taken from left to right. In the first shot she's paying attention and smiling, but by the time I took the second one her attention was wandering. By the third shot she was being silly, and by the fourth she was downright bored ;-)

Anyway, this is probably one that I'll try and reshoot at some point (maybe one each for all the kids), but for the time being at least I thought this one was worth sharing.

Oh, and all the shots were taken with same aperture and shutter speed, and all used flash (bounced off the ceiling).

I went up to Fleetwood today – to blow away the cobwebs – and came back with this. Unusually, I used fill-flash on this shot as it didn't seem likely I'd be able to rescue sufficient detail in the posts by any other means. Had it not been quite so windy I might have tried a multiple exposure HDR, but there was a very strong on-shore wind so that wasn't really an option.

Update: following a couple of the initial comments I decided to rework this one a little – the sky is now a little more dramatic and the foreground is marginally lighter. The original version, should you be interested, is here:

.../archives/a_rock_and_a_hard_place.php