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.

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.

This is definitely one of my favourite portraits in recent months: a shot of our good friend Dionne, shot with an IR converted X-E2 and the new 90mm f/2.

If you're a Fuji shooter you'll already know that all their lenses are good, but the 90mm is truly excellent, even wide open. I'd definitely recommend you try it out if you haven't done so.

This is a follow-up to the shot I posted yesterday, and while I like the abstract quality of that one I much prefer the almost surreal feel to this one.

One of the things I like most about photographing at the fish market in Dubai is also one of the things that makes it most difficult - the vast majority of people there want to be photographed. For example, every time I've been there in recent years I've run into the guy on the right, and every time I've photographed him with much the same serious expression. As best I can tell, he's a humorous guy, who laughs and smiles while talking to you, but he has a serious face for the camera :-)

On this occasion he complicated things by grabbing the guy on the left. They may know each other, but the impression I got at the time was that he was just standing there minding his own business - hence the rather puzzled expression.

So, not exactly a candid shot, nor much of an environmental portrait, but I like it nonetheless.

This shot was taken on the same evening I photographed Issa, shot using a Nissin i40 flash with the Wescott Rapid Box 20" Beauty Dish.

A shot of my good friend Craig Marshall, taken during my Shoot the Street workshop at this year's GPP event.

This is a shot of one of the participants from our Venice Carnival Photo Tour, shot during our natural light workshop.

When I first started photoblogging, way back in 2004, I posted pretty much every image that I was reasonably pleased with. In recent years I've been more selective, to the point where I have at least 150 images sitting on my hard drive that I can't decide whether to post. They aren't any worse than my previous images, so it's not a quality issue, I just can't decide whether they're worth posting. I don't think they're any worse than any of my previous images, so it's not a quality issue: more a case of not being sure what they say. Which, in turn, reflects a lack of direction in my photography that I think I probably need to address. In the meanwhile, I'll post some of the backlog, starting with the shot of this guy taken recently in Shenzen, China.

After spending a couple of days in Hong Kong we headed over to Shenzhen in mainland china. This shot was taken towards the end of the second day.

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) :-)

Despite having several dozen images I could post, most of which I like, I've rather neglected the blog of late as there's been rather a lot going on (and there still is). That said, I'm going to make a concerted effort over the next week or so to post the backlog, starting with this one. It was taken in the Nason Moretti glass factory and is a shot of one of the glass blowers taking a quick break before his next vase arrived.

Another shot from our Venice Carnival Photo Tour back in February of this year.

This is a shot of the JBR skyline in Dubai, taken from the west frond of the Palm, and was shot with the XT-1 and 14mm using a handheld (and panned) 1/2s exposure.

This is quite some way from being one of the best portraits I've ever shot - the focus is off, and he's not exactly 100% engaged - but I've posted it because I really like his skin tone. For the last few years I've been shooting quite a lot of portraits when I travel to Dubai, with both Canon and Sony gear, and have ended up converting a lot of them to black and white simply because the skin tones were off. Not by a huge amount, but by enough to be problematic. The XT-1, in comparison, does a much better job, to the point where I've only had to colour correct a few rather than most of them. So, not the best justification for posting an image, but it will do for today.

This was taken in the fish market in Dubai with the XT-1 and 56mm f/1.2, and there are two things I really like about it. First, the skin tones are accurate, and noticeably better than I would have got with either my Sony A99 or Canon gear if I'd still been using it. I've shot portraits in Dubai since 2007, and often had to correct skin tones (or give up and convert to black and white) but the XT-1 seems to produce OOC images that are a lot closer to reality.

The second thing I like is the sharpness, which is easily comparable to my Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 on the Sony.

All in all then, a good result.

There are days when I think that this kind of job would suit me: shot on the ferry between Masirah island and the mainland of Oman.

This was taken during our Venice Carnival Photo tour during our natural light workshop and is a shot of the undeniably easy to photograph Lorraine Langon who attended the workshop with her husband.

A great reminder that it's better to shoot kids before they get bored, not after: shot during my recent trip to Oman with Issa.