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.

Rhowan and I spent an hour or so shooting some new portraits today, and while I didn't get many I especially liked I am pleased with this one. I messed up the lighting a bit - not enough light in her eyes - but there was sufficient detail to rescue.

As always, let me know what you think.

The preparations for Halloween have begun - a shot of Rhowan's boyfriend / The Joker. Shots of Rhowan as Harley Quinn will no doubt appear at some point soon :)

Me: Tiggy, stop being silly!
Tiggy: I'm not being silly!
Me: You're pulling silly faces!
Tiggy: No I'm not!
Me: ... OK.

On a more technical note: this was shot with the new Fujifilm 90mm f/2 (the focal length equivalent of 135mm on a full-frame camera). It's a stunning lens, even wide open as with this shot. Watch this space for more of the same over the coming weeks.

For one reason and another it's been an age since I posted anything, so here's a new image I took this afternoon. Libby and I went to the park with Tabby and Tiggy - to shoot some stuff for her degree - so I snapped a few images while we were there. Of the three that are worth posting, this is my favourite: a shot of Tabby rubbing an errant piece of leaf from her eye.

Libby and I took the kids over to Preston yesterday afternoon, to visit our good friend Neil Simpson and his wonderful family. While we were there I took quite a few shots of the kids in the park, but I think my favourite from the trip is this one: a shot of Rhowan taken in Neil's back garden.

When Tiggy (5) and Tabby (8) asked Rhowan to look after their "babies" I suspect they hoped she'd take the job a bit more seriously :-)

I still have a few shots from Dubai and Oman to post but thought I'd put this one up first. It's an old image, shot in 2009, and features Tabby, our youngest but one daughter. It was taken when we were still living in Bulgaria, just after she discovered the ash pile from our wood stove. This wasn't the last time she decided to play in it, but it was one of the better photographs of the resulting mess. I have no idea why I haven't posted it before - there must have been something I didn't like about it - but I couldn't come up with any good reason not to post it now.

Despite her being under the weather I managed to convince Rhowan to spend some time letting me photograph her with my latest Fujifilm lens, the XF 50-140mm f/2.8. As you can see, it's not half bad :)

If you'd be interested in seeing a high-res version you can do so here:

chromasia.com/blog/images/50_140/rhowan_phoenix.jpg

A shot of Tiggy, taken during our recent trip to Bulgaria.

Another portrait of Tabby, chilling out with one of her workbooks we brought over for the summer.

Our trip to Bulgaria certainly seems to be agreeing with Tabby :)

It's difficult to describe the experience of being and living in Bulgaria, but this shot captures some of its flavour: taken during a recent trip to a local waterfall for a barbecue. Libby's in the foreground, and our good friends Andy, Petsi and their young son Mario are in the background (along with Finley, our eight year old).

As a counterpoint to yesterday's portrait of Finn - which didn't really show him off at his best - here's one I took about a minute earlier.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Finley (our nine year old son) was in a terrible mood when this was taken, but in reality he was just a bit miffed that I asked him to look up. Clearly, playing on the iPod is a lot more important than having your portrait taken ;)

I thought that I was done with the sugar skull portraits of Rhowan but thought I'd try something slightly different with this one, i.e. combining two separate RAW conversions: one for most of the image, the other for her eyes. The first has a clarity setting of -48, which is why this one is a lot softer than the other two I posted, while the second had the clarity set to around +20.

Let me know if you think this approach works better.

This started out as an alternative to the shot I posted yesterday, and I had intended it would be in colour. The more I played with it though the less I liked it, so it ended up in black and white too.

I posted some shots of Rhowan back in November when she first tried sugar skull makeup (here, here and here) but we thought we'd try it again today: a) because I think it makes for a good portrait, and b) because I wanted to shoot some more images using the 56mm lens on the XT-1. We shot a whole bunch of stuff and ended up with two that we both like: this one, and a colour version that I'll post tomorrow. We both prefer tomorrow's shot.

Here's the second shot taken with my new Kipon M42 Tilt and Shift adapter along with an Asahi Pentax Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4. Like yesterday's it's largely experimental, but I think it has a bit more creative merit than the last one.

Let me know what you think.

Here's the first of what I hope will be many shots taken with my new Kipon M42 Tilt and Shift adapter along with a Asahi Pentax Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4 that I picked up on eBay recently.

If you're not familiar with tilt shift lenses take a look at this link. It explains the basics of camera movements and how these affect the appearance of your images.

For those of you who are more familiar: this shot was taken with 8 degrees of horizontal tilt at an aperture of f/4. Having taken a closer look at it - i.e. on a decent screen rather than the back of the camera - I think I probably overdid it a touch: there's just too much blur on the right, and the outer edges of both of Rhowan's arms are a bit soft. Next time, if I'm shooting a similar shot, I think I'll try somewhere around 5 degrees instead.

As always, let me know what you think.