Another early morning shot from our Venice Carnival Photo Tour.

If you've taken a look at the original you will have noticed that this isn't a straight shot. The reason for this is that the original scene was a shop in Burano (Venice), with two interesting windows either side of a rather boring door. The straight shot didn't work - the door really wasn't all that interesting - but I really liked the way the puppets in both windows appeared to be looking at one another. So, long story short, I combined two shots, one of the window on the left, the other of the window on the right.

A slightly unusual view of Dubai creek today, shot through the viewfinder of Craig Marshall's Hasselblad 500 during my Gulf Photo Plus Shoot the Street workshop.

Here's another image shot with the XT-1 and 14mm f/2.8. It was taken down at the Jumeirah public beach and was stitched in Photoshop from six landscape format images. With the benefit of hindsight I'm now wishing I'd shot in portrait format instead - this version ended up a bit thinner that I would have liked - but I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out.

If you're interested in taking a look at a higher res' version (3000px x 750px) I've uploaded one here:

http://chromasia.com/images/xt-1_4_3000_wm.jpg

It's not often that I post two shots side-by-side but in this case I couldn't decide between the two and didn't think it was worth posting them as separate images. Both were taken during our photo tour to the Venice Carnival earlier this year.

In other news ...

I'm really pleased to announce that we're launching a new course today: The Art of Black and White Photography: ASSIGNMENTS, designed to follow on from The Art of Black and White Photography on Udemy.

It's a four week, online, assignment-based course, and if you think you might be interested, just click the link below.

The Art of Black and White Photography: ASSIGNMENTS

We've scheduled two occurrences so far – May and June – and while there are quite a few places available for June there are only for (from 25) left for May: so sign up soon if you want to take part! Oh, and if you haven't signed up for the Udemy course yet (which you'll need to do before you can work through the new course), we're offering it at half-price for anyone who signs up for The Art of Black and White Photography: ASSIGNMENTS.

And if you're interested, Antony Northcutt has posted a great article on his blog about why he's going to be taking the course in May. Thanks Antony :-)

It's been a while since I changed the way this blog worked but today I implemented a new commenting system, powered by Disqus rather than Movable Type. As such I'd be really grateful if you could leave a comment on this image just to check that everything's working OK.

All the old entries will still use the Movable Type script – there's no way to import 48,911 comments into Disqus – but all new entries will use Disqus: it's faster than Movable Type, has a lot more features (including automatic notifications of new comments), and is generally a more capable solution. Fingers crossed it all works as expected :)

As for this shot, it was taken during my recent trip to the UK, on Blackpool beach. Let me know what you think.

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?

10.25am on 15/9/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 70mm f/11.0 1/160 aperture priority +2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 none 2.39x1

Libby (my wife) is normally a very good judge of how my images will be received by you, which, in this instance, is a bit worrying. Here's how the conversation went on this occasion:

Me:"What do you think of this one? I like it, partly because it's different, but also ...".
Libby: "This really is the most horrible shot you've ever produced!"
Me:: "The most horrible?"
Libby: "Yes."
Me: "Oh ... OK ..."

I think she was probably exaggerating, or didn't trawl far enough back through the archives to find something genuinely horrible, but her opinion is clearly somewhat different from mine ;-)

So ... love it, hate it, couldn't care less? Let me know.

I was away this weekend, shooting a wedding in Venice with Tom Wicky. It's a city I haven't visited before, and while I didn't have a great deal of time to explore it during this trip, it's definitely somewhere I'd like to visit again. I'll post a few shots from the wedding over the next few days, but in the meanwhile here's a diptych I shot in Venice airport.

In case you're wondering what you're looking at: these are semi-transparent overlays on the outside windows. I did think about posting just one of them, but didn't think either of them worked especially well on their own. Both were shot with my Ricoh GRD III.

When I was over in Barcelona last September, at the European Photobloggers meetup, I shot a sequence of 19 images from a high point in Park Guell. Each of the 19 images (shot at 57mm at f/8) were used to construct this image, and the final panorama covers a view of around 320°.

From a technical point of view it was relatively straightforward: the 19 images were shot using a Really Right Stuff BH-55 PCL-1 panning clamp (overlapped by around 30-40%), and then the panorama constructed with PTGui. At full resolution then the final image is 43,195px by 3516px: almost 125 megapixels.

The reason I haven't posted it before is because the small version looks rubbish, even at 1030px wide. With that in mind though I've posted a much bigger version here:

.../archives/the_barcelona_skyline.php

This is 7716px by 533px, and weighs in at 1.8MB, so may take a bit of time to load :)

If you were following chromasia last September you will be able to identify some of the landmarks I shot during my trip. From left to right these are: the power station; the exterior of the Sagrada Familia (an interior HDR is here); the communications tower near the Olympic stadium; and the Torre de Collserola communications tower and the Temple de Sagrat Cor.

So, if you've ever wondered what down-town Barcelona looks like from the top of a hill, now you know :)

I took this shot after Craig and I spent several hours photographing the railway tracks featured in my previous entry, and beyond that there isn't too much else I can tell you about this one other than to say that there was something about the scene that appealed to me.

Let me know what you think.

On a related note: Craig has posted another shot from his visit, which I think looks pretty good.

And finally, on a totally different matter, here's an interesting photographic project that I came across on twitter this morning. I seriously doubt that I'd have the patience to set something like this up, but the end result is definitely interesting.

This is the last shot I'll be posting from my recent trip to Barcelona, and it's definitely one of my favourites. It was taken from just across the road from the Olympic Stadium, a few minutes after the sun had dropped below the horizon, but I'm afraid that I can't identify the building on the horizon. Hopefully one of you will be able to enlighten me.

I got an email earlier today from a photographer who had stumbled across my beachcombing gallery. He said that he was pleased to have found it because he now felt like less of a nut photographing stuff that got washed up on his own beach :-)

And my reason for mentioning that is because I was working on this shot when his email arrived. It's clearly not a beachcombing shot, but it is a photograph of something damaged, and possibly abandoned. What I like about objects like these is that each of them has a story – normally one of damage or neglect – a trajectory that leads up to the point at which the shutter is pressed.

I have another 11 shots from my trip to Barcelona, that I was going to continue posting, but Fleetwood Pier burned down last night so we went up there this afternoon to see what was left. The leftmost side of the pier (built of iron and concrete) seems to have mostly survived the blaze, but the main pier building has been totally destroyed.

The pier was opened to the public in 1911, and while it isn't the most photogenic in the area I have managed to get some decent shots over the last couple of years. I'll try and get some more later this week and will post any that are worth seeing.

Despite the fact that we're based in the UK our biggest audience has always been in the US. For example, in the last 12 months we have had 878,731 US visitors - distributed across all 52 50 states: 136k from California, 67k from New York, 54k from Texas, 39k from Florida, and so on. By way of comparison, in the same period we have had 235k visitors from the UK, 108k visitors from Canada, 49k from France, and so on. In fact, according to Google Analytics we have had visitors from a total of 205 countries, including the Vatican and Antarctica, but the bottom line is that almost a third of you are based in the US.

So, on that basis: happy Independence Day :-)

I'm not sure that Finley will thank me for this one when he's older, but I couldn't resist posting it. He'd insisted on getting dressed up, because Harmony was wearing her princess costume and Stephanie wig (Stephanie is a character in Lazy Town, a children's TV programme) and decided he wanted to be photographed because Harmony had already had her photograph taken.

As with my previous shot, this was also taken with my new Canon G9, though this time I also had my 580EX II flash attached, bounced from the ceiling. It would probably have been better if I had switched to shooting in manual, as Finley's hands are a bit too blurred for my liking, but I haven't got the hang of manual mode with the G9, at least not when I've got an external flash attached - for some reason most of them end up over-exposed.

And in case you're wondering about the background: Rhowan and Harmony's bedroom has just been decorated; i.e. the walls have been painted and we've fitted some new laminate flooring. As you can see though, they're still missing their skirting board.

The thing I like best about event photography is that you have very little time to think, and very little control, especially when you're trying to work out the composition and lighting. Take this one as an example ...

One of the shots I needed to get was one that contained both the front of the North Pier and the performers, but we didn't have time to set up a specific shot so I needed to grab what I could while they performed. This one, as Libby and one of my older daughters pointed out, would have been better if the Pierrotters had been in front of the main sign – and I do have some shot from that angle – but this one is probably a stronger shot.

Anyway, it's the best shot I could get that contained all the elements, so let me know what you think.

First of all, thanks for all the thoughtful comments on my previous image – they're much appreciated – but there are a couple of points I'd like to pick up on one of them.

Garry and YETi both commented to the effect that they don't feel they should comment unless it will have some constructive impact. And clearly, from my perspective, constructive criticism is great – it helps me to move on – but I wouldn't want people to feel that that's all they should offer. Chromasia has been around for a long time, and as I write this there are 39722 comments containing over 1.3 million words – some of these are constructive, some are not, but all of them carry the various conversations forward.

There were also a number of interesting comments regarding the future of blogs, images on the web, and so on, but I need to think about these before I reply.

Anyway, on with the show :-)

The last few images I've posted were taken on a trip last week and, what with one thing and another I haven't been out since. So, I'm posting this one, a) because I don't have anything else worth putting up, and b) because I think it raises an interesting point. Personally, I really like this one – for reasons I'll come to in a minute – but I have to say that I don't think it works all that well at this resolution.

The things I like are the feathery detail of the structures on the pier, the couple walking arm-in-arm atop the new sea wall, the lone woman taking her dog for a walk, and a whole host of other small details – most of which are barely visible at this resolution. But what's the point in posting it if you can't see the things that make the shot?

My main reason (other than having nothing else to post) is that I wonder how acclimatized we have become to expecting an image to be eye-catching at the resolution we typically see on the web? Clearly, most photographs will look better when printed rather than previewed at a fraction of their original resolution, but does the fact that we spend most of our time looking at photographs on the web mean we have changed the way we see a photograph? I'm not sure I know the answer, but I do know that I very rarely post anything that doesn't work at this size.

Anyway, if you're interested, I posted another version of this image here:

.../archives/a_question_of_scale/index.html

As you can see, there's a lot more detail in the original image, and while you might not agree that "it makes the image", it does make for more interesting viewing.

I was going to write more this evening but both Tabby (11 months) and Finley (three in August) are sleeping really badly this evening – both are nodding off for around ten minutes then waking up again. Anyway, the upshot is that I've been trying to write this entry for almost two hours, and it's very slow progress.

So, the short version is that this is another shot of Central Pier, facing north; i.e. I'm further down the beach than yesterday.

Increasingly I find myself tempted to crop my images to a more panoramic format, and almost posted a 4x1 crop of this one. In the end though, I decided that 3x1 was probably a better option.

And if you're interested, I've posted a 100% square crop of the segment of the image containing the person and dog. Before you look though, which direction did you assume they were walking in?

.../archives/travel_the_distance.php

Since writing my LAB tutorial I've been revisiting various shots that I've had laying around with a view to reprocessing them. This one, for example, was taken at the same time as this one, back in the summer of 2004. I didn't post it at the time, as it was quite similar to the one I did post, and I couldn't produce a colour version that I liked. As you can see, the original has a rather different palette:

.../archives/time_will_tell.php

What I didn't much like was the contrast between her pink cardigan and the yellow bucket. In this version, using LAB, the colours are much more muted and, in my opinion at least, it's a better image. As always, I'd be interested to hear what you think.