I arrived in Dubai on Friday morning, but didn't manage to get out shooting until yesterday afternoon. I took a trip to the Palm Jumeirah, with my good friends Catalin Marin and Robin Nichols, and while my pre-twilight shots aren't great, I'm pleased with at least three of the ones I shot after sunset. I'm not sure if I'll post all three: the post-production is quite different for each one, but they share much the same content. I'll see.

And if you're interested, the original (Camera Raw default version) is here:

.../archives/jumeirah_beach_1.php

And I would write more, but I have some work to do this afternoon, after which I'm heading off to the Mall of the Emirates to attend the opening night of the in the blink of an eye' exhibition (which features six of my beachcombing images). The other photographers who are exhibiting their work are Joe McNally, Joey L, Melissa Rodwell, Steve Simon and Zack Arias, so I'm definitely feeling honoured that I was asked to take part.

After that it will be time to hit the sack as my first GPP workshop kicks off bright and early at 8.00am ... and I'm so not a morning person ;) I am looking forward to it though :)

This is another shot of the same young boy, taken about 15 minutes before the previous one and, as you can see, he's not quite as confident in this one. By the end of the evening he was running up to me and grinning from ear to ear, but at this point his approaches were a bit more cautious :)

If you're interested, the somewhat less than inspiring original is here:

.../archives/an_infectious_smile_2.php

We went to a party at our village hall last night, to celebrate Trifon Zarezan, or the "Day of the Vine-Grower". Most of the village seemed to be there, and although our Bulgarian is still quite rudimentary, we did manage to have a few conversations with our fellow villagers.

Among the guests was this young lad and, while it's not one of the best portraits I've ever posted, I defy you to tell me that it didn't make you smile :)

Much as I love my Ricoh GRD III, its lack of a built-in viewfinder can be a bit of a pain at times, especially in bright light, and while I did get the GV-1 optical viewfinder when I bought the camera, I don't always remember to take it out with me. When I was trying to take this shot, for example, I really wished I had as it was almost impossible to see the image on the preview screen.

So, I guessed the angle I'd need and shot what I thought would be something quite close to the image you can see here. Sadly, as you can see from the image I've linked below, I didn't get it quite right:

.../archives/as_the_light_falls.php

Anyway, rather than trash the image I decided to transform it instead (Edit → Transform → Skew). I then toned it using a Curve and ended up with something that is probably a bit closer to the image I would have taken … if only I'd remembered to take my viewfinder out too ;)

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

This one was taken from the same vantage point as my shot towards our village, and while there was definitely something about it that I liked, the original composition didn't work:

.../archives/powering_down.php

Once I decided to alter the crop ratio though (from 4x3 to 16x9), flip the image horizontally, and darken and tone the image, I was a lot happier with it. As always, let me know what you think.

This is out of sequence, insofar as it was shot before back seat driving and the aftermath, but I thought it was worth posting too. As always, let me know what you think.

This was taken a few days ago from one of our bedroom windows and, while it's a bit of a compositional mess – it seemed like a good idea at the time – I do like the colours. What I should have done of course is gone outside with my tripod and found a better angle, but it was just a bit too cold. So, instead, I rested my camera on the windowsill, snapped a few shots, then went and stood in front of the stove for ten minutes to warm up again :)

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the dark object (top left) is the roof and guttering of the house next door.

I do have another shot of Finley that I'll probably publish later this week. It was taken a few seconds before my previous entry, and clearly shows that he was enjoying his sledge ride. By the time this one was taken though he'd been covered in flying snow and then crashed at the end of the run. As he's generally not the bravest little lad in the world, he was rather upset – as you can see from his rather forlorn expression. I should add though that a few seconds later he was fine ago, and running back to the top of the hill for another go :)

As usual, if you're interested, the original is here:

    .../archives/the_aftermath.php

In other news, the voting for the 2010 Photoblogs Awards has started, so if you are already registered at coolphotoblogs.com it's time to add a voting link to your template. If you're not registered, you can do so here. And finally, if you'd like to vote for chromasia, my profile is here:

    http://www.coolphotoblogs.com/profile3

And finally, I'm pleased to say that our latest tutorial – Digital Workflow: part five – was published late last night. If you're interested, there's some further info about the series here:

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

… more general info about the tutorials here:

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

… and details about our publication and development plans for the remainder of 2010 here:

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