I thought I'd posted all the decent shots from my trip to Photokina (see my last and only entry from the trip) but came across these today: two portraits of Patrick Hall, one of the co-founders of Fstoppers, looking a bit the worse for wear, late one night in a pub somewhere in Cologne (I would be more specific about the location, but as I was equally wasted I really can't remember where we were) :-)

For most of the wedding that Fabio and I shot at the weekend we were tasked with providing an informal record of the day – no posing, no set shots, and no queues of bored and reluctant relatives – but we did have 30 minutes with the bride and groom. I haven't looked through all the shots yet but I suspect that this one will be my favourite.

Shot in Troyan, Bulgaria.

This was taken during a trip to Adu Dhabi with my good friend Catalin Marin, just before the start of this year's GPP event. I didn't think about processing it until yesterday as while the scene was interesting – it's not often you come across a drive-through shisha in a car-pack – the light was terrible and the background was a mess. After playing around with it though, and dropping in a new background from the same trip, I think it works a lot better. It's not one of the best shots I've ever produced, but it was certainly interesting to work with.

As Libby's and our three youngest are back in the UK for the next eight days I thought I'd make the most of the peace and quiet by shooting some portraits or Rhowan (10) and Harmony (8) – it's been a while since they made an appearance on the blog, and even longer since I shot anything intentional (rather than grabbed).

I also decided to light the shot(s) using a 40" umbrella and 580EX II.

Anyway, just before we started Rhowan said "Oh wait, I need makeup!", disappeared for ten minutes, and then came back looking like a character out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. At this point, despite the makeup, I did still think it might be possible to get a reasonably 'nice' shot of her, but, if you take a look at my gallery of out-takes on Facebook though, you'll see that I was wrong :)

So, no 'nice' shots, but I did get some that were interesting. When I started processing this one I was working with just the image on the right, but later decided to incorporate the blurrier shot on the left. I did look through them all in the hope of finding two contrasting images I could post as a diptych, but couldn't find one that went well with the 'goblin' shot so ended up using the blurry version of the same expression.

So, not a pretty portrait, but I like how it turned out. Let me know what you think.

This is another shot taken during our early morning shoot down at St. Mark's Square. The benefit of being there so early, other than the fact that the light was fantastic, was that the only people there were either wearing costumes or taking photographs, so it was a much better time to go than later in the day.

As for this image: it's definitely one of my favourites from the trip.

captured camera lens focal length aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO flash image quality RAW converter image editor plugins (etc) cropped?

7.10am on 18/2/12 Canon 5D Mark II EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM 200mm f/4.0 1/125 aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 200 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 4x3

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.

One of the things I talked about during my recent Dramatic Post-Production workshop for Creative Live was the importance of previsualing an image as you take the shot: going beyond how it looks in the viewfinder by imagining how it could look after it's post-produced.

This shot started out in that vein but, as you will have noticed if you've already taken a look at the original, it didn't end there.

When I took the shot I was thinking about creating an image that captured something of the nature of long-haul flying: the long, tedious hours sat in one place, and the various things we do to entertain ourselves en route.

When I looked at the image later though I decided that it wasn't particularly interesting (I'm as bored with looking at Suduko as I am with playing it) so started thinking about what I could have done instead. After playing around with various alternatives I ended up with this image: a photograph of a photograph.

In this case both were taken with my Ricoh GRD III (and the added shot was taken during the same trip, 17 minutes before the main one), then the images were blended in Photoshop. The only thing that was a bit tricky was getting the reflection looking right - I almost forgot to flip it horizontally - but other than that the post-production was relatively straightforward.

As always, let me know what you think.

I have loads of shots of Rhowan that I like, and almost as many of Harmony, but I have very few of them together. As such I think that this one will prove to be a favourite of mine for quite some time to come. As always, let me know what you think.

In other news, we're offering a 25% discount on our Photoshop tutorials to celebrate the 4th of July. Happy Holidays :)

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

Here's a question for you: what sort of sign indicates an incline in your part of the world? In Europe (and the UK since 19-something-something), this is the form that it takes, and I've always thought that it was a rather odd way to do it. When I was younger, the UK signs were of the form 1 in 5 (now 20%), 1 in 10 (10%, as in this example), and so on. To me, 1 (foot down) in 6 (feet along) seems intuitive, whereas 17% is something that I need to work out.

Anyway, I digress, but there isn't a great deal more I can tell you about this one: it's a weathered road sign, at the top of a hill. I can show you the original though, which was adjusted using just two curves – one for colour, the other for contrast:

.../archives/ten_per_cent.php

On a related matter, in terms of post-production at least, we've added a new feature to our Photoshop tutorials: Mini-PSDs. One of the things our subscribers have said that they find most useful are the layered PSD files that we include with each image-based tutorial. As such we’re now releasing an additional low Mini-PSD every week from images that I've posted on the blog. If you're interested, we've added five so far:

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

Yes, I know, two images in one month is a fairly dire achievement, but our Bulgarian winter experience has turned into more of an exercise in survival than I expected. It's still the adventure I hoped it would be, but we've also had quite a few things to deal with that weren't entirely expected. I've been updating my Facebook profile with the details, but the short version is that I sprained my back, the temperature has dropped as low as -23C, our pipes have frozen (twice), our van has broken down, and one of our electrical sockets caught fire this morning. In short then, most days have been taken up with dealing with the necessities of winter life.

It could have been a lot worse though: our village hasn't been cut-off following a heavy snowfall, the mains water hasn't frozen, our electricity supply has remained constant, we haven't run out of wood, and our roof hasn't collapsed under the weight of the snow - all of which have been known to happen in previous winters. Fingers crossed that a) the rest of the season goes reasonably smoothly, and b) I have a bit more time to document it :)

I have managed to take a few shots though, mostly with my Ricoh GRD III, and really like how this one turned out. It was taken on the way back from Yalovo and you can just see our village in the distance. If you take a look at the electricity pylon you'll see that it has two arms of the right-hand side, one on the left. It's almost impossible to make out at this resolution, but our village is immediately to the right of the lower arm on the left. It's not quite as remote as it looks :)

If you're interested, the original is linked below. As you'll see, the major change (other than the black and white conversion) involved balancing the tonal range of the foreground to the sky, i.e. the latter is now quite a bit darker (and the majority of the highlight detail has been recovered), while the foreground is much brighter.

.../archives/towards_ganchovets.php

In other news: if you'd be interested to know what we have planned for our Photoshop tutorials this year, take a look at the page I've linked below. As you'll see, we're introducing a variety of new content and media:

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

This was taken at the end of last month and is a shot of Tabby of me in a hammock in a friend's garden. There are two things I like about this one: one, it's a fun shot, and two, her slightly false smile. She was enjoying swinging back and forth, but was also a little bit nervous about it too. And while the plaster on her forehead looks a bit incongruous, photographically speaking at least, I decided not to clone it out. She'd tripped over earlier that day, and slid along the pavement on her head, and insisted that we leave the plaster on her head.

In other news: it's just over two weeks since Libby headed back to the UK to have the baby (due 11th November), and about four and a half weeks until she gets back. She's doing fine, and the kids and I are surviving pretty well, but time is r e a l l y  b e g i n n i n g  t o  d r a g and I miss her :(

My apologies for the lack of updates but I spent most of last week week writing my latest tutorial – Portraits: part two – on the topic of how to postproduce high-key and low-key portraits. If you're interested, there's some further information here:

http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/p2_info.php

In terms of this image: it's a shot of a electricity/transformer box and was taken on a walk up through the old part of Veliko Tarnovo. If my Bulgarian language skills had improved enough I'd be able to tell you what it says, but all I've been able to work out is that the first bit of the yellow danger signs says 'don't touch' and the poster is advertising something that took place on the 22nd of August (I think).

If you're interested, the original, taken with my Ricoh GRD III is here:

.../archives/dont_touch.php

My apologies for not posting much recently but I'm currently writing another book and, as usual, my time-management skills have let me down somewhat. In other words, the deadline is fast approaching and I'm spending virtually every minute either writing or sourcing images. The good news is that it will be finished on time (fingers crossed), but the bad news is that I'm unlikely to have any time to shoot any new material until around the 8th of next month.

In light of that I've posted this one, another shot of Rhowan taken at the same time as this one. I didn't post it at the time, as I wasn't happy with the composition, but after cropping it to 4x3 I think it looks quite a bit better.

On another matter – and feel free to skip this if a) you are already subscribed to our Photoshop tutorials, or b) have heard enough about them this summer – we've been running a summer promotion for the last couple of months: offering 15% off the first year's payment of an annual subscription or our lifetime membership package. In other words, if you have though about subscribing, now would be a great time to do so as this offer ends at midnight tomorrow; i.e. the 31st July. For more information about this offer, and our tutorials, please take a look at the following page:

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

I've been trawling through old shots of our kids over the last week or so for a project I'm working on, and came across this one. I think I overlooked it at the time as the composition didn't work as-shot; i.e. at 3x2. This crop though, in my opinion at least, works quite well.

As for the lighting: I used my flash on an extension cord and bounced it off the floor.

This morning, I thought we might be back to square one. Libby had a pain in her chest and difficulty breathing: the same symptoms as last Saturday, the same ones that the hospital thought might be down to either pleurisy or a pulmonary embolism. So, we went back to the doctor's (our local GP) and came away with two more possible diagnoses:
Costochondritis or Tietze's Syndrome. Both are characterised by inflammation of the cartilage that connects the inner end of each rib with the breastbone or of the cartilage between the ribs, most probably caused by a virus. So, hopefully, she should gradually improve over the next five or six weeks (or thereabouts).

Anyway, after we'd been to the doctors and her chest pain had settled down we went up to our local park for lunch. I took my new Cyber-shot T9 with me (which I recently acquired for a project, that I'll explain in a week or so) and took a few shots of daisies, tree blossom, and so on, as we took an extremely gentle stroll. One of the really fun features of the camera is its 'magnifying glass' mode which enables you to close focus to around 1cm. And no, it's not a world shattering photograph, but it's good to finally have something to put up. Hopefully - touch wood - things will be back to normal fairly soon, but in the meanwhile I suspect that I'm not going to be able to manage daily updates, but I'll see what I can do.

On a related note: thanks for all your support this week - it really is appreciated. And Libby wanted to add the following:

Regular visitors know that I hardly ever comment here (anyone remember the last time?); but I asked Dave if I could just add a 'footnote' to his comments as I wanted to thank everyone for their kind wishes. Its wonderful to read them all, and see how far around the world they've travelled. Over 2,800 people have read the comments page, from numerous countries around the world - which is pretty amazing! Not many people get over 100 'get well' messages - but I'm sure they're working as I feel much better :-))

Thanks, Libby x

I haven't entered any Photo Friday challenges in the last few weeks as I haven't had time to participate, but I couldn't resist this one – Furry – suggested by Heather. We got a couple of kittens at the weekend. Well, I say "we", what I really mean is that our daughters got a couple of kittens, and while I have to confess to not being the world's greatest animal lover I do think these two are cute.

What's interesting about this shot, for me at least, is that I took around 30 photographs and the composition was 'off' on all of them. A lot of them though worked much better at a 4x3 crop (the same as my G5) rather than a 3x2 (my 20D). I suspect that I need to rethink my compositions as it seems that I'm probably falling back on old habits; i.e. attempting to use my 20D in the same way I used the G5.

And I do realise that there are limitless ways to interpret 'Furry' that don't involve pet cats, I just couldn't come up with any today ;-)