I must have processed this shot at least ten times since I shot it back in April of this year, and up until today I couldn't come up with a version I liked. This one I'm happy with.

Yes, it's a composite: one shot from Dubai, the other from the Ash Sharqiyah region of Oman, taken during one of mine and Issa's trips to my favourite country in the Middle East. Both the originals are visible when you hover your mouse over the 'Show the Original' link at the bottom right of the image.

I thought it was about time that I got out and shot something new, and I'm glad I did, I like this one. It was also a lot of fun to process - masking around that aerial was quite therapeutic ;-)

I haven't posted anything on the blog for ages, so thought I'd share another of the images I shot during one of my GPP workshops earlier this year.

In other news, we've just opened up our new mentoring programme to 12 new students. If you're interested in improving you photography, postproduction, or both, take a look.

This isn't quite abstract enough to be unrecognisable, but I like that it's not as immediately obvious as some of my other shots of Dubai.

While pretty much everyone enjoyed the Blackpool Pride Festival there were a handful of slightly less cheerful folk.

Three portraits from yesterday's Blackpool Pride Festival in Blackpool, all of which were shot with the Fujifilm X-T1 and 90mm f/2 (my new favourite lens). As always, it was a great event, with lots of great characters.

I really should explain this one, but I thought it might be more interesting if I didn't.

I remember reading somewhere that if the earth was shrunk to the size of a pool ball, or a pool ball expanded to the size of the earth, the earth would be the smoother of the two.

Before I visited the desert near Dubai for the first time I had a rather romanticised idea about what I might find: rolling dunes, crystal clear skies, and maybe a camel or two. More than anything though, I expected a clean and pristine environment. That wasn't the case: there were motorcycle and dune buggy tracks all over the place - it looked like a carpark after a busy day, albeit a very sandy one. But every disappointment is its own opportunity and since that trip I've made a point of photographing the tracks in the sand whenever I see them. This particular set was shot in November 2013 during my Landscape Photography workshop for Gulf Photo Plus.

One from the archives today, shot during my Landscape Photography workshop for Gulf Photo Plus in November of 2013.

Another street shot from Dubai, and while I don't have much to say about the image itself it is worth mentioning that this one was processed a bit differently, i.e. I just used Capture One 9 - no Camera Raw, no Photoshop, no Curves - so the original you can see here is the RAW file prior to any changes in Capture One. Having done quite a bit of testing in recent days I suspect that a large percentage of my subsequent images will be processed in Capture One, as try as I might I can't quite get Camera Raw to produce an initial conversion that has quite the same quality.

When I first shot from the roof of the Four Points by Sheraton back in 2011 any image from there was a relative novelty. These days pretty much every photographer who has spent more than five minutes in Dubai has taken a similar shot to this one but I did think this one was worth sharing.

A gentle shot today: the Dubai skyline, shot from the Palm.

This was taken in Satwa in Dubai, outside a small bakery. Apparently the item they're working on is part of the inlet valve for the oven. I'm not sure what was wrong with it, but it certainly provided a good opportunity for a photograph.

This was taken during my Shoot the City workshop for Gulf Photo Plus, from the rooftop bar at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel on Sheik Zayed Road. The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted that it was shot with an X-Pro 2, which Fujifilm MEA lent me for a few days. I didn't have time to do a full test, but my initial impressions were very good. I'm not sure I'll get one - I'm holding out for the X-T2 (which, rumour has it, should be released later this year) - but I'm definitely tempted.

It's also worth noting that this was constructed from 5 shots which were median stacked in Photoshop to remove the traffic.

For anyone who knows the fish market in Dubai you'll probably be able to work out where I took this one - it's just before the entrance to the fish market, above a wall of white tiles. I've shot it several times in the past, but this is the first time I've come up with something I've felt was worth posting.

This is a shot of a Seagull camera (made in China in the late 50s) which is focussed on the skyline around the Dubai Marina, shot on my good friend Bernard's balcony. If you take a look at the original you'll see that it's a composite of three separate exposures - one for the screen, one for the wooden body of the camera, and one for the background. I've also included a small thumbnail of me taking the shot. As you can see, it's a rather large camera :-)

This was taken from the same vantage point as the shot I posted a couple of days ago - the 42nd floor of the Shangri-la hotel on Sheik Zayed Road - and while there are a few things I don't like about it (more of which below), on the whole I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Aesthetically, I don't think it quite works - the composition is a bit messy - and I would have preferred a more interesting sky and a bit less haze, but on the whole I thought it was worth posting.

This was taken during my recent Shoot the Street workshop for GPP. One of my students was shooting this guy's portrait, so while he was doing that I concentrated on his hands and ended up with one of my favourite shots from the trip.