Moral of the story: don't fall asleep around other photographers :-)

To round out the year I've posted 12 of my favourite shots from 2013: six from Dubai, two from Oman, two from Jura, one from Venice, and one from Blackpool. I'm not sure which is my personal favourite - I have different reasons for liking most of them - but I would be interested to hear which you like best, so let me know.

In other news, don't forget that today's your last chance to grab yourself one or both of our Christmas Deals: a Lifetime Membership to our photography and post-production for just £29, the same price as we normally charge per year, and or The Art of Black and White Photography on Udemy for JUST $19, saving yourself 80% on our usual price.

For full details on both offers just click the following link:

chromasia.com/training/christmas_2013.php

To round out the year I've posted my 12 favourite shots from 2011. The first two are beachcombing images, both of which were taken on Fleetwood beach, and I've included them because there's probably no other type of photography I enjoy more: there's something really therapeutic about wandering along a beach in search of things to photograph.

The third, Istanbul #1, was taken during the recent Faces and Places photo tour to Istanbul that I ran with Bobbi Lane and I've included it because it's probably my all-time favourite street shot. The fourth image – the shot of the old chair - was taken during the same trip and I included it because it typifies another of my favourite types of photography: shooting seemingly bland scenes that I know can be post-produced to look considerably more interesting.

The next four images (the middle row) were all taken in Dubai. The first, the shot of the Dubai skyline taken from the roof bar of the Park Regis hotel, ended up as one of my favourites simply because it's a bit different. I've been to Dubai eight times now so I'm always on the look out for alternative ways to capture the city.

The next two – the shot of the Sheik Zayed road taken from the Four Points Sheraton roof bar and the shot of the Burj Khalifa taken from the roof of the Executive Tower B building in the Business Bay area of Dubai – made the favourites list because I think they ended up being about as good as I could get them. There's probably room for improvement, both technically and creatively, but I was really pleased with how they both turned out.

'You said it would last forever' was included for two reasons. First, because I thought it was an interesting commentary on Dubai, but also because it took me quite a while to work out how to shoot it. It was almost pitch-black, and while I did have a tripod with me I didn't have a remote release so ended up shooting a set of images at different focal points which I then blended in Photoshop.

The next two images (bottom left) were both taken in Oman during our first Gulf Photo Plus photo tour. The first is a shot of my good friend Catalin Marin and the second was taken during a sunset shoot on the beach near our hotel.

The penultimate image was taken on Blackpool beach and I included it because it's probably my favourite UK beach-scape of the year, and the final image was taken with my iPhone 4. It's not my favourite iPhone shot from 2011 – I haven't blogged that one yet – but it is the one that made me realise that the iPhone should definitely be considered a serious photographic tool.

So, those are my choices from the year. I'm sure that some of you will have some different favourites, but I hope you enjoy my choices too.

On which note: I hope you all have a fabulous New Year's Eve and that 2012 brings you the prosperity, health and happiness that you all deserve. Have a good one :)

As I did at this time last year I've posted a collection of my favourite images from 2010 to close out the year, one from each month. If I'd picked my top 12 from the year as a whole I suspect that there would be some changes, and I also suspect that some of you would probably make different choices, but when I went through each month these are the ones that I enjoyed producing the most.

If you want to comment on any of the individual images just click the title above each one, or the image itself, and this will take you to the relevant entry on the blog. If you'd like to see the rest of the images I posted in a particular month, just click the month listed above each image.

As always, let me know what you think.

In other news ...

Today's the last day to get 25% off our Photoshop tutorials. Further info here:

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

And finally, best wishes for 2011. Let's hope it's a great year :)

I've spent the last couple of days wondering what to post to close out the year and then came across this entry on momentaryawe.com (run by my good friend Catalin Marin): his twelve favourite shots from 2009, one from each month. So, with credit to Catalin for the idea, here are my twelve favourites for the preceding year. Had I selected images from the year as a whole I suspect that there would be a couple of changes, and I also suspect that some of you would make different choices from each month, but when I looked back through the images I'd posted this year these are the ones that gave me most pleasure to produce.

As always, let me know what you think.

On a different matter: don't forget that there are just a few days left in which to snap up a 15% discount on our Photoshop tutorials. Further details here:

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

And finally: Happy New Year for 2010 :)

While I didn't manage to post an image a day during 2008, in fact I didn't even get close this year (228 images, excluding this one), it was an otherwise excellent year.

On a personal note, all our kids are doing well, and while Libby and I need far more sleep than we ever seem to get, we're both happy and well.

In terms of the business: I've already mentioned a lot of the things we'll be doing next year, but 2008 was a good year for us too. The tutorials* are doing well, I travelled to Barcelona, Dubai, and Bulgaria, and I had a number of interesting commissions. I didn't find enough time to blog, but I'm happy with the shots I did post and hope to find the time to post more regularly in 2009.

The really good news though, that I only received this is morning, is that chromasia was voted the Most Popular Photoblog, and was a finalist in the Photoblog of the Year and Best European Photoblog categories in the 2008 Photoblog Awards.

Thanks to all of you who voted for me in 2008, it's very much appreciated, and congratulations to all the other winners. If you haven't checked out their sites before, now's your chance:

Photoblog of the year: A Walk through Durham Township
Best American Photoblog: Mute
Best Asian & Oceanian Photoblog: fotologs.cn
Best European Photoblog: Vanilla Days
Best New Photoblog: Ilan Bresler Photography
Best Landscape Photography: Absolutely Nothing
Best Black & White Photography: look-s
Best Photoblog Design: nissou*

Be sure to check out the other finalists in each category too.

Anyway, I guess that's about it for 2008, so Happy New Year and I'll see you in 2009 :)

* If you're interested in signing up for our tutorials, we're offering a 15% discount until midnight today. Further details are available on our main tutorials page.

Two bits of news ...

It doesn't seem all that long since I told you that we were expecting Finley, but now I have the pleasure of telling you that we're expecting another one (which we're reliably informed is a girl) on April 16th of next year. Our house will probably be extremely hectic for many years to come :-)

Oh, and if you come across any good deals on second-hand 8-seater MPV's or small minibuses, please let me know, as our 7-seater car is about to be made redundant. I did offer to stay at home and let Libby take the kids everywhere, but it wasn't a popular suggestion ;-)

And that's the first bit of news.

The second bit – and this is the work issue I mentioned recently – is that I'll be leaving my current job (as a lecturer in Higher Education) in the New Year to run chromasia on a more full-time basis. As many of you know we set up chromasia as a company around 18 months ago, but it's something we've done in conjunction with my other job.

Recently, the University I work for has been going through a restructuring process which has involved a voluntary severance offer. I applied, and was accepted; and in many ways I'll be sad to go, not least because I've worked with much the same group of people for the last 11 years, and I'll miss them. But it's also a really exciting opportunity. I'll finally have the time to write the online tutorials we've been promising for what seems like forever, we can now schedule some more face-to-face ones to run next year, I'll be able to do more commissions, and I'll have much more time to take photographs to post here. Lately, the blog side of things has been suffering a bit, so it will be really good to get back up to speed on posting stuff that I'm proud of rather than archive raiding for stuff that will suffice.

Anyway, I think that's about it for today ... new lives all round :-)

Oh, and no, this isn't a photograph, but given the circumstances I hope you'll let me off ;-)

Update: as I write this there are 81 comments on this entry – thank you – and I will reply to the various points you've raised; but not tonight. Yesterday was a very long day, and I now feel as though we've been clawing our way along an extremely dark and tortuous tunnel for far too long. Now, having emerged into the sunlight, I'm going to rest awhile. So tonight it's Chinese food, a good bottle of wine, a film, and a deep sigh of relief. Back soon.

And thanks again.

From top left to bottom right, here are all the images from the last twelve months.

For those of you who have been around since this time last year, you'll know that chromasia's birthday is February 5th, 2004 – this was the day that I registered chromasia at photoblogs.org and decided to post an image a day. Like last year, I didn't quite manage 365 images (I was eleven short this year), but it's still something I aspire too. Maybe – touch wood – I'll manage this in chromasia's third year :-)

Anyway, all I really want to say today is thank you: to all of you, for your continued support and thoughtful and helpful comments; to my wife and family, without whom this simply wouldn't be possible; and to everyone else who's contributed during the last twelve months.

Thanks :-)

I didn't have anything much to put up tonight so, given that this week's Photo Friday challenge is Best of 2005, I thought I'd take the opportunity to repost a few of my favourites. I did try to pick one, but it wasn't possible: it was hard enough to whittle it down to four! Anyway, in the end I decided on don't look up #2, space, SG-Blackpool and those eyes again. There were many others I could have chosen, but these are the ones that I'm most attached to, in one way or another. They're also mostly the ones that you suggested yesterday, so thanks for helping me decide.

On another matter: I'd like to thank you all for visiting chromasia over the last twelve months. As always, you've provided great feedback and support, have been understanding when there have been technical problems with the site or I haven't been able to post for other reasons, and have continued to make this project worthwhile. Without you, I'd still take photographs, but I'm sure that the experience wouldn't be anywhere near as rewarding. So thank you, and I hope that you all have a great 2006.

On a personal note: 2005 has been a really hectic year. Finley was born back in August, work has been hectic, we've had numerous projects on the go in terms of sorting out our house, I visited China and so on. And while 2005 was enjoyable, it was bordering on being a little too hectic for my taste, so I'm hoping that 2006 will be a little more relaxed :-)

And finally, after months of trying to sort out the problems with chromasia's server, I've managed to migrate everything to the new server. As I write this the DNS changes haven't propagated so chromasia.com still points to the old server, but this should all sort itself out in a few days. Anyway, chromasia is now hosted/sponsored by Richard Jones who runs pixyBlog. Over the next twelve months or so Richard is going to be developing various online services for photographers and photo libraries, including a hosted photoblog solution and, all being well, I'll be piloting some of these for him in the months ahead. Anyway, many thanks to Richard for providing a home for chromasia.

I'd also like to thank a few other people while I'm here: my wife and kids, for putting up with me constantly disappearing to either take photographs or post-process them, and thanks too to John (Washington) for keeping me company while wandering around Blackpool and the surrounding coast.

So I guess that's about it for this year. Once again, thanks for all your support over the last twelve months, and I hope that you have a great new year :-)

Although there are entries on chromasia that date as far back as July 2003 I always consider its 'official' birthday to be February 5th, as it was on this day last year that I i) decided to post an image a day, and ii) registered chromasia at photoblogs.org. And back then I guess there were three things that I wanted to achieve; to post an image a day, to become a better photographer, and to join in with the ever-expanding photoblogging community.

I didn't quite manage to post an image a day, but I did get close. Since this time last year 364 images have been posted on chromasia, of which eight were guest entries (on today's entry the guest entries are the ones I've used for the number 1 in the bottom right of the image). Hopefully, especially since I can now 'future post' with MT v3, I'll manage 365 over the next twelve months ... fingers crossed.

In terms of becoming a better photographer: I think I still have quite a way to go, but I do think I'm noticeably better than I was 12 months ago.

As for joining in with the photoblogging community: I guess it's this aspect of chromasia has been the most rewarding. Over 6000 comments have been left in the last year, and the vast majority have encouraged me to continue, critiqued my work as necessary, and given me the impetus to keep going. I've also met numerous people from around the world who have made my photographic journey a considerably richer experience, and I now consider many of these as my friends. But I guess that those people are only a fraction of the people who visit chromasia: I have around 50000 unique visitors each month from around 74 different countries (based on data for 2004) – all of which never ceases to amaze me.

So thank you to all of you; as always it's very much appreciated.

I also need to thank Brandon Stone and everybody else who has contributed to photoblogs.org, as without it I suspect that chromasia wouldn't be anywhere near as popular or as well frequented. And I'd also like to thank Sam for the inspiration for the format for today's entry. I know other people have done this too but it was Sam's ddoi year 1 collage that I came across first.

And last but not least, I also need to say a H U G E thank-you to my wife as I know that she's one of the very few women in this world who would put up with me spending so much time and effort here. Thank you.

And there are many more people I could thank and should mention, that I know or have met during this last year, but hopefully you already know that I'm grateful.

And I suppose I could go on with this entry indefinitely, but I won't. All that remains for me to say is that I hope you enjoy year two :-)