I already posted a smaller version of this image as part of my XT-1 review but I thought I'd add it here too: a shot of my good friend Issa, reflected in the window of one of the metro stations on Sheik Zayed road in Dubai.

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.

As I'll be heading off to Dubai again soon, for GPP2014, I thought I'd go through my shots from last year and came across this one: a shot Zack taken at Ravi's restaurant in Satwa, Dubai.

Another Venice shot today, taken last February as we cruised around the canals in a gondola.

Greg Heisler, shot at Ravi's restaurant in Dubai during the Gulf Photo Plus event in March.

A quiet shot today, snapped on Blackpool seafront last month.

A fun shot today, taken during my trip to Dubai back in March for the Gulf Photo Plus training event. Can you name that tripod? :-)

I'm going to let this one speak for itself.

Since I launched this blog back in 2003 I've retained pretty much the same workflow: any images I'm currently working on sit in a folder called 'working files'. In the early days there were never more than a dozen or so images in there at any one time: I worked on them, got to the point that I was reasonably happy with how they'd turned out, and then blogged them. Today, there are 139 images: ones that I'm still working on but can't get right, and some of them have been there for at least two years. I should probably just give up on at least some of them, but in each case there's something about them that I like - I just can't get them right.

And my reason for mentioning that is that I've come up with a new way of dealing with them. Rather than just randomly opening one, working on it, then closing it again because I can't work out quite what I want it to say, I've been trying a different approach: deciding on a specific strategy then seeing which images it will work with. In this case, and for another three that I'll probably post next week, the strategy was 'high contrast black and white'. It didn't work with quite a few that I tried, but I think it works well with this one.

Since shooting this back in March I must have opened the file at least a dozen times, but up until this version I haven't been happy with any of the results. Part of the problem is that this is a scene I've shot quite a few times - it's one of the locations for my Gulf Photo Plus Shoot The City workshop - so I didn't want produce yet another skyline shot, impressive though it is. A second problem, and I only realised this yesterday, is that all my previous attempts were trying to correct the image rather than work with it, particularly in terms of the slightly hazy light, but also with respect to the dusty clouds on the horizon. Once I gave up trying to correct the latter (hence the warm, brown tone) I ended up with something I like a lot better.

As always, let me know what you think.

This is a shot of Craig Marshall, shot back in March when he came over to Blackpool for the day. And, if it looks familiar, that's because I posted a version on Facebook not long after his visit. Since then I've reworked it a bit - it's more dramatic now, and I pulled out more detail in the camera - so I thought I'd post it here too.

Some people are definitely worth photographing.

I ran one of my favourite workshops over the weekend: Creating Dramatic Images. It's a two day event, designed to provide students with a good understanding of Photoshop, from both a technical and creative point of view. So it's not just about tools and techniques - the 'what and the how' of Photoshop - it's also about why: why you might want to change an image in a particular way, how to edit it to tell a more convincing story, and so on.

We start with a discussion about the nature of dramatic images, how post-production should be seen as an integral part of the photographic process (not just something you bolt on the end), and how to develop a workflow for post-production where technical competence is very firmly in service of creative and aesthetic intent, not an end in it's own right.

On Sunday we work through a whole range of tools and techniques (Curves, masks, toning, Lab Color mode, and so on), but on Saturday afternoon we head down to the seafront for a couple of hours shooting. One of the briefs I give the students is to shoot something bland: not because there's any intrinsic merit in shooting deliberately dull images, but because they're great to use to illustrate the power of Photoshop. So, as it was a dull afternoon, I got the students to shoot the (rather flat) sea and (rather dull) sky.

This shot was my version, and if you take a look at the original you'll see that it doesn't appear to have a great deal of merit (other than the fact that the composition's OK). Once processed though it tells a much more interesting story.

I had great plans for posting loads of shots while we were in Bulgaria this summer but, what with one thing and another, it didn't happen. I'll catch up over the next week or so.

In the meanwhile, here's a shot of Harmony, taken while visiting friends.

If you asked me to describe Bulgaria this image comes close to summarising an aspect of many Bulgarian towns: an old concrete building, that probably dates back to Soviet times; adverts that might have been cool in the 1970s; an old, partially dismantled vehicle; and (less obviously) a stork's nest atop a disused industrial chimney.

The third and final portrait of Rhowan from this first set of the summer, and my definite favourite from the ones I've posted so far.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that we put some thought into this shot, but in reality it was just a quick snap, taken while we were waiting for the train to Veliko Turnovo. The train didn't arrive, but at least we got an interesting shot: the second of three portraits I'll be posting of Rhowan. Of the three I think my favourite is the one I'll be posting tomorrow, but let me know what you think of this one.

And in case you're wondering about the processing: most of it was done in RGB but I switched to Lab Color to tweak the colour. The way I did this was to work on the image in RGB while creating a separate Lab Color version. My reason for doing this was because if you switch to Lab you need to flatten your document, losing any adjustment layers. What I now do is copy the background into a new document, convert to Lab Color, tweak the colours with a curve, then paste the copy merged image at the top of the layer stack of the RBG image. I then switch the blend mode of that layer to colour. The best of both worlds :)

It's been quite some time since I posted any shots of the kids so I thought I'd spend some time over the next few weeks shooting their portraits, and who better to start with than Rhowan :)

It's been a while since I blogged anything so thought I'd post another shot from our trip to the Venice Carnival back in February of this year (one of around ten that I haven't got around to blogging yet). This one was taken down at St. Marks Square and is a shot of two of the huge number of people who turn up each year to parade around Venice in their costumes.

Oh, and if you're interested, we're now going to be running two trips to the Carnival in 2014. The first one we advertised sold out in just a few days so we've scheduled another for the 19th-24th of February. If you think you might be interested in coming along please take a look at the following page for all the details:

chromasia.com/training/events/venice_2_14b.php

I'm not quite sure why they painted this anchor – it's a bit of a ratty old thing – but I did think it was worth photographing.

I think the title for this one probably speaks for itself: another british summer.

And in case you're wondering about the post-production: I didn't do much to this one other than drop in a different sky. There was some detail in the original, but it was very flat and drab and didn't suit the lighting on the building.