Libby and I took the kids down to the beach yesterday evening - it was the hottest day of the year so far - and while I didn't get any great shots of them, I did find this jellyfish. I suspect it was dead, but the tide was coming in and would have covered it about ten minutes later, so I'd like to think it survived.

My penultimate vehicle related shot from Masirah Island, a mud flap from a Nissan, found on one of the many small beaches we visited during the trip.

My apologies for the lack of recent posts but at the end of GPP Issa and I headed down to Masirah Island where we met up with Catalin Marin for a few days shooting. There was an internet connection in the hotel, but it was much too slow to post anything.

Anyway, to get back to the point, we had a great few days shooting - landscapes, portraits, and another project that I'll probably post at some point - but of all the shots I took I think this may be my favourite.

As always, let me know what you think.

I still have a couple of (pseudo) 'little planets' to post but I thought I'd put this one up first. As you'll see if you take a look at the original I didn't quite nail it in one shot, but I'm happy with the final result.

If you've already taken a look at the original you'll know that I took a few liberties with this one, mostly in terms of blurring the clouds, but also in terms of tidying up the foreground and horizon.

Another shot from yesterday afternoon.

I originally processed this one a few days after it was shot but I've sat on it until now as I really wasn't happy with the way it turned out. The problem was that I decided that a black and white version would work best, but no matter how I adjusted it (in terms of both contrast and tone) it didn't look right.

Anyway, I took another look at it today and tried a different approach – partially desaturating it and adding a variable tone – and now like it a lot better.

As always, let me know what you think.

Oh, and my apologies for the lack of recent updates but all the kids have been ill resulting in me and Libby having a string of small coughing children interrupting our sleep for about the last two weeks. They're all ok, but it's starting to take its toll on us: we both need more sleep.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz .....

No trip to the shore would be complete without at least one shot of an abandoned or washed-up item :-)

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.

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.

Here's another shot from my recent wander around with Simon Jenkins: a shot of a rather obliging lady we met on Fleetwood beach.

I'm just putting the finishing touches to my initial review of the Sony RX1, within which I stress the quality of the images this camera can produce – it's a truly awesome camera. It's not quite so great for this type of shot though.

Typically, when I'm shooting on the beach I shoot from as close to the ground as possible, especially when I'm shooting reflections. When the sand is dry, that's OK, but if it's wet it's not so much fun with the RX1. It's fine with my A99, which has a flip-out screen, but with the RX1 you either need to commit yourself to getting soaking wet, or guess. In this case I guessed.

And if you've taken a look at the original you'll see that I didn't quite get it right on this occasion :)

No trip to the beach would be complete without a beachcombing shot :)

I posted a shot on Facebook yesterday, of Craig Marshall photographing a discarded can on Blackpool seafront. Here's one of the shots I took of the same can.

This is a companion shot to this one, and one of my favourite shots of the year, not because of its immediate impact, but because it was an image that changed quite a bit during its post-production, particularly in terms of what I was trying to achieve. I'm going to be using this for a Creative Workflow tutorial in the New Year, so won't say too much about it now, but the short version is that I ended up mixing two black and white conversions: one to increase the foreground contrast, and another to increase the sense of depth from the foreground to the horizon.

I'll write/record more about it in the New Year but, in the meanwhile, let me know if you prefer this one or the alternative colour version I posted back in October.

captured camera lens focal length aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO flash image quality RAW converter image editor plugins (etc) cropped?

10.09am on 19/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM 16mm f/5.6 1/160 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor

This is a companion shot to the one I posted a few days ago and, while it's a bit more contrived, I am pleased with how it turned out.

As always, let me know what you think.

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10.46am on 15/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 45mm f/11.0 1/200 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none no

When I first started taking shots like this one – items of discarded or washed-up stuff on the beaches near our home town in the UK – I shot them in a slightly different way. Specifically, I tended to shoot them with a relatively large aperture (f/4 or f/5.6) to throw the background out of focus. The problem with doing that though, especially when you're shooting this close to a foreground item, is that the depth of field becomes very shallow. This is great for the background, but not so great for capturing detail in the foreground item you're shooting.

Lately I've been using a slightly different approach: shooting with a smaller aperture to capture the detail in the foreground object, but then blurring the background to simulate a shallower depth of field using Bokeh (Alien Skin's lens simulation plugin). The benefit of this approach is twofold. First, the foreground element is sharper, both in terms of front-to-back and intrinsic detail (most lenses performs better at f/8 or f/11 than they do at f/4 and f/5.6). Second, it's relatively straightforward to add as much blur to the background as it needs. In the case of this image the processing was even easier as I used Gaussian Blur for the background rather than Bokeh – I just duplicated the layer, blurred it, then blended it with the lower layer using a mask.

The net result is that the final image looks like it was shot using a large aperture – the item is cleanly separated from the background – but there's a lot more foreground detail. In other words then it's a technique that allows you to get the shot you want rather than one that compromises foreground detail with respect to background blur (or vice versa).

If you're interested in taking a more detailed look at this image I've added it as our latest Mini-PSD, available as part of a subscription to our online photography and post-production tutorials.

On a different note ...

As I mentioned when I posted my last entry, I've switched to using Disqus for comments rather than Movable Type. Judging from your responses to my last image it all seems to be working well, but if you do spot any problems please let me know.

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10.55am on 15/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 24mm f/11.0 1/125 aperture priority +1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor transformation

I'm now back in Bulgaria after a fantastic week in Seattle running my Dramatic Post-Production workshop for Creative Live. It was a bit stressful at first, but once I'd got over the fact that I was in a studio with six students, with another 6000 watching online, it was a lot of fun. I'm really glad to have had the opportunity to go and would definitely do it over again :)

If you missed it, you can download the videos for all three days here. The usual price for the download is $149.00, but if you're subscribed to our photography and post-production tutorials, or subscribe now, you can get a $50.00 discount (check out the members' page for details). We've had a lot of great feedback, both during the event and after, so it's definitely worth checking out.

In other news, I'm heading off to Istanbul next month with Bobbi Lane, to run our Faces and Places Photo Tour to Istanbul (8-12th November), after which we'll both be in Dubai for the Gulf Photo Plus Fotoweekend event (16-19th November). There are still a few places left on our Istanbul Photo Tour, but quite a few of the FotoWeekend workshops are already fully booked - so sign up now if you're thinking of coming along.

As for this shot: it was taken at Fleetwood during my recent trip to the UK, and as the post-processing was quite interesting I've used it as this week's Mini-PSD: take a look at Curves 5, used to darken down some of the brighter blurred grass in the foreground.

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9.39am on 19/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 34mm f/2.8 1/800 aperture priority +1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 Bokeh minor rotation

This is one of two shots I'll be posting of this flip-flop that I found on Fleetwood beach a few weeks ago, and one of my personal favourites in recent months. I can't really explain why, but there's just something about this type of shot that I find really satisfying, in terms of both shooting and post-production.

This is now also a well travelled flip-flop as I have it with me in Seattle to use as a prop during the first shooting session of my Dramatic Post-Production workshop I'm presenting for Creative Live. If you haven't checked it out yet, it starts at 9am (PST) tomorrow, and runs through till around 4pm on Sunday. Tomorrow morning we're going to be working through/discussing a variety of topics but in the afternoon we're going to have a couple of hours to shoot, using a variety of props that the students will be brining along, some that have been provided by Creative Live, and my flip-flop from Fleetwood beach. I'm not sure what we're going to come up, but it should be fun :)

Anyway, take a look at the following link, and if you have some spare time over the weekend, sign up.

http://www.creativelive.com/courses/dramatic-images-practical-hdr-david-nightingale

On a related note: we're offering a 20% discount on the first year’s payment of an annual subscription to our photography and post-production tutorials for the duration of my Creative Live workshop. So if you've been thinking of signing up, now would be a great time to do it :)

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10.19am on 19/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM 23mm f/8.0 1/80 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none minor

This shot was taken during one of my one-to-one training sessions while I was back in the UK, but it's a shot I would have taken during any of my trips to Fleetwood beach - there's just something about part-buried/abandoned objects that really appeal to me.

In this case though I wasn't especially happy with the original capture: the light was flat, the sky had no detail and, despite its abandonment, the bike looked far too 'cheerful'. With the addition of a few Curves though, and a 'respray' (the bike's colour was inverted), I think it ended up looking a lot better.

As the processing was quite interesting, particularly in terms of changing the colour of the bike, I've posted this one as our latest Mini-PSD.

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2.10pm on 15/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 60mm f/11.0 1/125 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none no