This is the last of the shots I'll be posting from the wedding I shot recently with Craig: one of the cutest kids I've photographed in quite some time :)

Elsewhere ...

My recent interview with PhotoNetCast is now live:

.../photonetcast-52-talking-photography-with-david-nightingale.html

And I'm currently taking part in the inaugural game of HDR Tennis:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/HDR-Tennis/105060586224248

This is the last of my seascape shots from my recent trip back to the UK, and while it's not the most striking of the ones I've posted, I do like it. The good news is that I'll be back in the UK again next month (6th-16th), so should have some more seascapes to post then :)

If you've been following my recent posts you'll know that I posted quite a few portraits from the recent Bodygraphia photographic symposium out here in Bulgaria, many of which were shots of Iva Sakarova (e.g. this one and this one). I also spent another morning with Iva, just before she left to study in the UK, and have two shots from that session that I'll be posting. Both were adjusted in Lab Color mode (hence the rather odd colour balance), and both show a slightly different side to Iva's character.

In other news ...

I've just finished uploading the video for our latest Critique Slot Screencast, based on an image supplied by Ricardo Herrera. If you're already subscribed to our tutorials you can view the screencast here. If not, then there's some further info linked below:

.../tutorials/online/critique_slot_screencasts.php

This is the penultimate image I'll be posting from the wedding I shot with Craig recently, and one of my favourites from the set. There are three reasons I like it.

First, it's a nice, happy shot: I love photographing people who are genuinely and unselfconsciously enjoying themselves.

Second, it was dead easy to post-process. Now, much as I like mucking around in Photoshop – I find the whole process very therapeutic – it's always rewarding to actually nail a wedding shot that requires very little work. In this case, just two adjustments: a black and white conversion using the Channel Mixer, then a single Curve for brightness and contrast.

If you're interested, the Channel Mixer conversion was biased towards the blue channel. This accentuated his facial details, and had the added bonus of lightening his jacket (both my black and white tutorials cover this technique. Further info here and here). All I then needed to do was brighten the image and add some contrast using a fairly strong S-curve, a topic I spend quite a lot of time discussing in my Tonal Range and the Curves Tool tutorial.

The third, and probably less obvious reason I like this one is that his camera looks implausibly small and fragile. Don't ask me why that's a good reason to like this image – I really have no idea why it appeals to me – but for me it's one of the elements that makes this shot.

As always, let me know what you think.

Oh, and Craig has also blogged a shot from the wedding today too. If you're interested, you can take a look here:

http://www.id7.co.uk/portfolio/archives/1009251900_clean.php

I almost didn't bother trying to post-process this one and, if you've taken a look at the original, you'll know why. Craig and I had been shooting in relatively bright sunlight, but just before I took this shot the sun dissapeared behind a small, but particularly dense cloud. The effect was pronounced: the sky remained bright, but the sea became very dark, dull and flat.

Anyway, as I liked the composition, particularly the cresting wave to the right of the end of the groyne, I thought I'd see what I could come up with, and once I'd added an extremely steep masked curve (to lift the foreground detail), the image looked a whole lot better. The only thing that didn't quite work out was the colour balance, i.e. using an RGB curve to make such a pronounced difference in brightness and contrast also added a massive boost to the saturation – the sea was now an electric shade of blue. I did try changing the blend mode to Luminosity, but this unbalanced the image in a different direction – the sky was blue, but the sea was virtually monochromatic. This could have been fixed – I could have toned the sea, but not the sky, or vice versa – but the simplest solution was to convert the image to black and white. A slight cop-out, but in this case an effective one.

Here's another image from the wedding I shot with Craig in Kendal the weekend before last: the grandmother of the bride.

In other news ...

I'm the invited guest on this week's PhotoNetCast podcast which will (probably) be broadcast live on Friday, at 4am GMT, that's 7am local time for me (further details here). We'll be chatting about a variety of topics, including Extreme Exposure (my latest book), so tune in if you're around.

Also, you will probably have noticed that I've added a Tweetmeme button and Facebook Like button to most of my blog pages. I'm fairly sure these are working as they should, but please let me know if you have any problems with them.

Here's another shot taken during my recent trip to the UK, and beyond that I guess I don't have too much to say about this one, at least not in terms of the image itself.

One thing that is worth mentioning though ...

As you can see from the original, this was shot on a dull flat day. In many ways, particularly in terms of post-production, I prefer flat light – an image with a reasonably restricted tonal range is often much easier to edit than one with harsh shadows and highlights. The downside of shooting in these conditions though is that the sky is often a uniform shade of grey, or subtle variations thereof. In these circumstances there isn't a lot you can do, i.e. you can try increasing the contrast, but if the sky is very dull this just results in all of it getting brighter or all of it getting darker: there's just no detail to bring out. In these circumstances toning an image (as described in my Toning Colour Images tutorial) can be a useful solution, i.e. rather than having some interesting detail in the foreground, offset against a grey nothingness in the background, the toning unifies the image, tying the foreground to the background.

While weddings are clearly events that centre around the bride and groom, one of the things I like best about them is that they're also comprised of a myriad of small but wonderful moments like this one.

This is the third seascape that I took while back in the UK recently, and I have two left that I'll post at some point next week. I can't decide which I like best from this set, but I'll be posting Libby's favourite on Monday.

In other news: my good mate Craig has just blogged one of his shots from the wedding we co-shot last weekend:

http://www.id7.co.uk/portfolio/archives/1009181900_clean.php

What with one thing and another he's hardly blogged over the last year or so it's been great to see that he's getting back into the groove. If you followed his blog in the past, stop by and say hello, I'm sure he'd appreciate it.

I don't shoot many weddings, maybe three of four a year, but when I do I really enjoy them. One of the main reasons is that they're simply nice events to witness, but they're also a great opportunity for 'people watching'. If you've tried street photography you'll know that one of the major problems is that a lot of people simply don't like being photographed, and a good portion of the rest of them have become increasingly suspicious of any form of public photography. At weddings though it's generally a whole lot easier: people are relaxed, your presence is legitimate, and so on. As such I often end up with a lot of great portraits that would have been much more difficult to capture in a public space.

On a more technical note: this one was converted to black and white using the channel mixer, a technique I discussed in quite a lot of detail in my latest video tutorial. If you're interested, there's some further info linked below, but the short explanation is that I biased the conversion towards the blue channel to accentuate the fine scale detail (stubble, hair, and so on). This is a technique that works well for male portraits, but biasing the conversion towards the red channel often works better for portraits of women and children as it produces much softer (and brighter) skin tones.

http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/bw2_info.php

I've had a great week in the UK. I met up with my good friend Craig (who I haven't seen since we moved to Bulgaria in May 2009) and we took a couple of strolls along Fleetwood beach and co-shot a wedding in Kendal at the weekend. I also had a great 1-2-1 training session today with a photog who wanted to improve his post-production skills. We spent most of the day working on the Curves tool, but also covered black and white techniques and RAW conversion using Camera Raw. It's always a pleasure to teach someone who's passionate about improving their skills, and really rewarding to be able to help them.

As for this shot: there's not much I can tell you about it other than to explain that it's a shot of the waves breaking against a groyne on Fleetwood beach. As always, let me know what you think.

If you're interested in seeing the exact changes that I made to this image it's our latest Mini-PSD. Further info here:

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

This was taken on Saturday when I photographed Daniel and Catherine's wedding in Kendal with my good mate Craig. It was a very relaxed day: we started shooting at the hairdresser's at around 11am (where this shot of one of Catherine's two bridesmaids was taken), then moved back to the hotel for the ceremony, meal and reception. We finished up at around 10pm then headed back to Blackpool to copy our CF cards, have a first run through the images, and drink a few beers. We got some great shots and I'll be posting a few more over the next week or so.

I'll post some more thoughts about wedding photography in a day or so, but right now I need to dash out the door and get down to our office in Blackpool. I have a 1-2-1 training session to deliver tomorrow, and a to-do list that's as long as my arm :)

Update: the version that's tom live is less extreme than the one I posted earlier, i.e. there's more detail in her skin in this version.

The skies were flat and overcast, it was windy, and towards the end of our walk along Fleetwood beach it rained, but Craig and I had a great time. It's been too long since I walked along the shore.

If you've been following our Photoshop Tennis page on Facebook you will have already seen this image. It was shot in Dubai earlier this year, and as you can see if you take a look at the original, the post-processing was extensive but straightforward: it was straightened, after which I used different 18 masked curves (one for each pane of glass), another for the frame, and then a couple of other adjustments to alter the colour balance.

In other news: I'm heading back to the UK tomorrow, to shoot a wedding on Saturday (with my good mate Craig) and to deliver a 1-2-1 training session next Tuesday. I'm also hoping to find some time to head down to the beach in search of clouds, waves, and washed up stuff. I'm really looking forward to it :)

This is the last of my images from the recent Bodygraphia symposium and is Libby's favourite of all the ones I've posted. It was taken during the same session as this one (the one that Libby said was the worst shot I'd ever posted), and was post-processed using just two curves: one for contrast, the other for tone (as described in my Toning Colour Images tutorial). As an aside, toning an image with a Curve is a great way to hide blown highlights. In this case, because I lowered the white point for the blue curve (i.e. moved it down the right-edge), the previously blown highlights are now yellow. It's a great way of making an accident look intentional ;-)

Anyway, to get back to Bodygraphia ...

As I'm sure you know, if you've been keeping up with the comments over the last couple of weeks, quite a few of the shots that I've posted haven't been especially well received, while others have received a decidedly mixed response. And while it would have been great if everybody had liked all of them, I'm not surprised by the mixed response: a lot of the shots I posted have been quite different from the stuff I normally post. On which note, it's back to normal on Monday when I'll post something a bit more ordinary :-)

This isn't a "wow" shot, the post-production wasn't especially complex, and Libby doesn't like it, but I think that this is one of my favourite portraits in quite some time :)

I have three shots left from the Bodygraphia symposium, this one, my favourite (which is quite similar to this shot), and Libby's favourite that I'll post last.

And I guess there isn't too much that I can tell you about this one other than to say that it's another portrait of Iva and that it was processed in Lab Color mode rather than RGB. It's a colour space that I've neglected recently, but when you really want to control the colour balance of an image it's definitely worth switching from RGB. If you're unfamiliar with Lab Color mode, take a look at the further info pages for my two Lab Color mode tutorials, both of which are linked below.

http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/lcm1_info.php
http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/lcm2_info.php

Oh, and as you'll see if you take a look at the original, I also skewed the image slightly as I wasn't entirely happy with the original composition.

Of all the shots I took at the recent Bodygraphia symposium that are directly related to the theme, this is one of my favourites.