This is the first in a series I took at Hengistbury Head this weekend. This one is looking back to Bournemouth. Of the set, it's my least favourite because the sun was still too high in the sky and it's blown out a little.

I got to use my new Lee filters for the first time which has helped the shot and I can see why other's photos taken with ND grads have this nice pink tint to them.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 1/125 sec, f/9, ISO 100

This is effectively a panorama shot wrapped around to look like a mini planet. I almost have it perfected but one of the things you must do is ensure there are no objects in the top or bottom of frame when you shoot them. The lamp post and tower just managed to fall in the zone when wrapped.

It was taken in Madrid two weeks ago when Claire and I celebrated our one year anniversary.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens - 1/2 sec, f/11, ISO 200

I took a couple of macro shots a few weeks ago but all the insect images went in the bin as they were out of focus or blurred. This bee was still in the process of warming up for the day so didn't move about much.

My only issue with the image is that the conversion to Jpeg hasn't gone that well - in particular it looks over sharpened and the colour of the catch light has gone quite blue compared to the original Photoshop image. I may end up reprocessing it to see if I can fix the flaws.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens - 1/250 sec, f/5.0, ISO 100

We had a rather large fire on the heath behind our house last week. It Bournemouth Echo article as it's the second time in a month there was a fire here. Unfortunately there is not much left now which is a shame because it's a rare bird breeding ground.

I should have taken my long lens; this shot was about as close as I could get due to a police line around the fire.

I don't think they liked the fact I was taking photos though as it got my name and address in their notebook.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 1/60 sec, f/11, ISO 100

I've been a bit lazy with photos lately. Some have gone to Flickr but not blogged. I also haven't been taking as many as I would like. I blame the cold weather mainly but also I'm doing about 14+ hrs travel a week at the moment for work and the last thing I want to do in the evening is go out and take photos. Hopefully things will pick up as the weather gets warmer.

I'm also torn between the new Canon 5D MkII and swaping all my kit and going with Nikon. Tough call - if I was starting out and knew what I know now about the two systems I'd go with the Nikon in a heartbeat but I have a lot of Canon gear which I'd have to trade in at a loss to swap over.

I'm probably going to sit on the fence for a while and see what happens. Unfortunately prices are set to rise due to exchange rate issues but there is a rumour of a new Nikon D700x so I'd be interested to know if they can stick the final nail in Canon's coffin.

Canon 400D, Tamron AF 55-200mm f/4-5.6 Macro lens - 1/40 sec, f/8, ISO 100

Since I can't afford nor make enough use of a dedicated tilt-shift lens I have to fake it but one of the main benefits is you get images that look like miniature models. This is my method...

First you need to start with an image that will end up looking realistic. It needs to be taken from quite a distance and with a long lens to compress perspective. You also need to be above the subject just as if you would be when taking a photo of a model.

Next take the image into Photoshop and duplicate the background layer (I always work non-destructively).

We are going to use the lens blur filter with a depth map to indicate where the blur should be so add a layer mask to the duplicated layer.

Select the gradient tool and select the black to white gradient, reflected (4th icon from the left) and reverse options as shown below.

  Then draw your gradient onto the layer mask. As we have the reverse option ticked you start at the point where you want the focus to be and move to the top or bottom of the screen. In this sample I put a slight slant in to ensure the focus hits both the people and the hut.

If you Alt-Click and then Ctrl-Click on the layer mask you should see something that shows a narrow band of white with a slow fade to black at the top and bottom of the image. Note that for the best effect you should have a long smooth gradient and not a short transition to black.

Hit Ctrl-D and then Alt-Click on the layer mask to switch back to the source image. Then make sure you click on the image icon to the left of the layer mask before invoking the lens blur filter (Menu > Filter > Blue > Lens Blur...). You need to select "Layer Mask" for the source and, since we have a white to black gradient, ensure that Invert is checked. The rest of the options just control what kind of bokeh you are after. When you are happy click OK and wait, possibly for a long time as the filter is quite expensive to run.

When the filter completes, just delete the layer mask to reveal the miniaturised image.

To make the result even more believable you can try and emulate the kind of lighting used when photographing miniatures. Boost the saturation and contrast with curves and you will have the final result at the top.

This is really the tale of three processes. I originally shot this with HDR in mind but when I processed it I came up with:

...which I think looks awful. I almost fell out with HDR at this and took the middle exposure to do a standard "7-point system" process in Photoshop to get this:

...which is much better but a little plain when sat next to the HDR version.

I wondered how I might get the best of both worlds so ended up loading the two images as aligned layers in Photoshop. My thought was to take the main image data from the plain one and use either the luminosity, hue, saturation or a combination from the HDR image.

The result wasn't great as it just became garish again so after messing around with different blending modes I settled on 'overlay' to make this image which I personally think is the best of the three.

So what do you think? I would love to know if you agree so please look at all three images and fave the one you like the most.

Best viewed large on black.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 5exp (1.6-20sec), f/8, ISO 100

As promised, here is my pick from yesterday's early morning shoot. There seems to be something about HDR that can turn an ordinary picture into somthing magical without too much effort.

If you look beyond the pier you will see a smear of lights which was the boat that appears in other pictures. I left it in to illustrate how long this one took as the boat was travelling very slowly.

You may also have noticed I've borrowed a naming convention from Thomas Hawk, that is "Plate 1", "Plate 2" etc because I take a lot of photos of the same thing and need some way to differentiate them.

Best viewed large on black.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 10 seconds, f/8, ISO 100

Since Claire got up way before dawn to catch a plane this morning I decided that since I was awake I would go and grab some dawn pictures.

I was at the beach about half an hour before dawn so I took some test shots of which this is one. The orange light is from a sodium street lamp just out of shot which, I think contrasts nicely with the blue sky.

I almost called this one "Oh my god, it's early" but the face in the life guard hut made me change my mind.

In the end I didn't get a nice sunrise because of the overcast sky. I saved the best for last though and will upload those shots tomorrow.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens - 8exp (1/4 to 120 second), f/16, ISO 100

It took a while but I finally finished processing the remaining honeymoon pictures. This was our suite at the hotel. It was taken from the window in order to get as much "room" as possible in the frame.

Like lots of my recent stuff, it is HDR. I'm starting to get the hang of it - like most post production the trick seems to be don't overdo it....

I've been bitten by several variants of this now and can see from the web that many others have too. This thread on Adobe Forums is a good source of information. There are a couple of bugs in Lightroom 2.0 so these steps may help.

Check that you have the latest Photoshop CS3 update installed. Sometimes it doesn't get applied correctly so use Help > System Info from within Photoshop and check that the following are true:

• Adobe Photoshop Version >= 10.0.1
• Camera Raw >= 4.5
• ScriptingSupport >= 10.0.1

Check that you don't have any apostrophes in your folder path anywhere. In my case changing from E:\Photos\James' Camera to E:\Photos\James Camera fixed the problem.

This last one only really applies when you can get the image into Photoshop but not back to Lightroom.

Check that the images isn't appearing in a different volume under the folder browser. Currently there is a bug that differentiates the casing of drive letters so you may find you have two volumes that differ only by case, e.g. E:\ and e:\. This one is a real pain and I hope they fix it soon.

If these don't sort your issue then I suggest you get on the thread linked above and let Adobe know...

It has been a while since I posted, mainly because I've spent every free minute processing wedding photos. Now I've moved onto the honeymoon set and have been using this technique a lot on the underwater images.

Taking photographs underwater is great fun but due to the way light travels through water you get two very common problems: low contrast and a blue-green colour cast. These problems get progressively worse as you go deeper because longer wavelengths of light (red end of the spectrum) can't penetrate as deeply. The image below was taken in the Seychelles and illustrates the issue well. It was only a couple of meters down but already you can see the colour cast and the image looks really flat.

You can fix this by taking your own light source, e.g. a flash or a torch but that only really works to light small areas. A wide angle like this has to be post-processed. So what can we do about it? The usual Photoshop way is to bring up levels and move the sliders until this hit the edges of the histogram as so:

This gives an image with a bit more contrast but you can see it still has a strong blue cast.

Remember that the water effects different wavelengths of light by different amounts so should use the levels command to manipulate each channel independently.

This gives a far better result. Lots of contract and a full spectrum of colour.

Just remember, you can't put back what wasn't there so as you go deeper you will lose red colour completely (red objects look black at 25m or so). If you use this technique then you can end up with desaturated, almost black and white photographs as shown below.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens - 7exp (1/250 to 0.8 second), f/16, ISO 100

I'm currently sorting through thousands of wedding and honeymoon pictures so this is just a taster. It's an HDR of the resort beach on Desroches Island. More to follow soon...

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 9 exp (1/80 to 1.6 second), f/16, ISO 100

This is another HDR photo but I'm much more pleased with the way it turned out compared to the last one. I think the sunset photo was plagued by in-camera noise from the low light. The other main difference between this and the last is a small amount of Photoshop tweaking after the HDR process - the tyres are darker, alloys lighter and a monotone tint. Only the car itself is HDR as I cut it out and placed it on one of the original exposures.

I love the way the HDR aspect makes the car look almost silver. I probably should have given it a clean though.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 7 exp (1/5 to 3.2 second), f/16, ISO 100

This was the sky outside of my study last night in HDR form. I used Photomatix to blend 7 exposures taken at different durations. I've tried HDR photography before with Photoshop but this is the first time with Photomatix.

I'm happy with the result but my tripod was at full stretch and it slipped slightly during the sequence which Photomatix then had to correct for so the image loses a bit of definition.

Canon Digital IXUS 860 IS - 1/200 to 1/640 second, f/5.8, ISO 80

Since I haven't posted for a week or so... This one is from the Zorbing on my stag day. Zorbing is... "a sport in which a participant is secured inside an inner capsule in a large, transparent ball which is then rolled along the ground or down hills". Basically a giant hamster ball rolled down a hill. Great fun though the harness Zorb (when the riders are strapped in) can be a little bumpy.

I created this composite in Photoshop.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/100 second, f/4, ISO 100

We see this fox quite often around the neighbourhood and this is the second time it has come into the garden in broad daylight.

It's quick though so I had to jump for the camera and use the lens that was fitted. I wish I'd had more time to use a smaller aperture though as it's a little soft. It's heavily cropped and a vignette added to try and focus attention on the fox.

I didn't want to risk opening the patio door so the shot is taken through glass which doesn't help.

I must admit, I like Photoshop. In fact I'm fascinated by the kind of changes a skilled person can make to a photograph, especially the magazine retoucher's work on people.

Here is my rather less skilled attempt at retouching a photo from last month's Digital Photographer magazine. It took me about four hours to do this. There are hundreds of tiny changes and tweaks adding up to approximately 24 major differences. Can you spot them all? (You might want to click through to a larger size.)

For demonstrations of better Photoshop skill these are worth a watch:

• The magic of Photoshop
• Extreme (Photoshop) Makeover
• Retoque com Photoshop
• Extreme Photoshop Retouch
• The camera never lies (BBC Radio 1 Surgery)

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/320 second, f/4, ISO 100

This is the last and my favourite of the architectural series from January. The photo itself is Bournemouth library in the centre of town. As usual there has been some processing because the original was very grey.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/80 second, f/11, ISO 100

The second in this series and right next door to the previous one. I have to admit I cloned out a bit of the sign to highlight the word but it summed up the mood that day. I have forgotten what the whole word said but in searching for another photo I came across lots of very good photos taken on Bournemouth beach which are well worth a look.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/100 second, f/11, ISO 100

This was taken a few weeks ago down by the beach in Bournemouth. For the end of January it was very warm and I liked the simple lines (also, it was very busy and pointing the camera up was the only way to miss the crowd).

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-f/4.5 USM lens - 1/60 second, f/4, ISO 100

This is what was behind the camera... As the chalet is hanging on the mountainside there is a huge vertical drop just outside these windows. The view is spectacular and not for people that get vertigo. You can see the whole of Meribel and you feel like you are sitting in a bird's nest.

Photography wise this is the shot I'm least happy with because it doesn't have the same level of colour saturation as the others (I tried but it ended up looking fake). Also, in this series I used quite a severe vignette to focus attention on the centre of frame which gives them a bit of a 70's feel (especially with the decor).

This is the set complete. I hope you like them. There are a couple more in my Meribel 2008 set which I won't blog about. Next time I'll post some architectural shots taken whilst photowalking around Bournemouth.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-f/4.5 USM lens - 1/6 second, f/4, ISO 100

As I mentioned yesterday, the chalet we stayed in was rather unique - built hanging on to the mountainside. The entrance is at the top of the building (behind the chimney in the picture). The precarious landing and steps are not child friendly either. The living space is at the level you see here with rooms on the floors below. The fireplace dominates the room and, as the steps to the right of it indicate, has a sunken seating area in front. The really spectacular feature is behind the camera - tomorrows shot.

I've done a fair bit of processing with all these pictures as the light was truly awful for photography - dull and grey. The chalet itself was quite dark under these conditions and any shot with a window in instantly blows out the highlights. All the internal chalet shots are a blend of multiple exposures taken from a single RAW file.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/4 second, f/22, ISO 100

It's been a couple of weeks since we got back from skiing but things have been hectic with the wedding planning so I haven't had much time to process the pictures. I didn't take many because a bulky SLR is not the best thing to carry if you might take a tumble on the slopes. There are more in Claire's photostream.

This one was taken from our chalet. You will see from the next few in the series that it was rather unique and had some specatcular views.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-f/4.5 USM lens - 0.6 second (BKT), f/22, ISO 100

Since the sky was so dramatic this afternoon, Claire and I took a walk down to the beach to watch the sun go down. This shot is actually an HDR composite of three bracketed images.

I've messed around in Photoshop a little but only to bring it back to what is was like in reality. The only think that still irks me is that the horizon is in the middle but it had to be in order to make the stick in the foreground lay on a 1/3 line.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/125 second, f/8, ISO 200

This is the second shot from Prestbury and one that has a lot of memory for me as I grew up in this village. This is one of those views you remember but has changed subtly from childhood - the 20 zone signs, the roundabout and road markings, the shops on the left and right are selling different stuff.

I'd love to find a photo from 30 years ago because I suspect the only constant, apart from the buildings themselves, is that the Legh Arms is still a pub.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/60 second, f/8, ISO 200

This is one of a series based taken last April in Prestbury. Again I've reprocessed the image but this time to more of an ideal than how it actually was. You can see the difference between this and the original.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-f/4.5 USM lens - 1/80 second, f/9, ISO 100

The second of two reprocessed shots taken in Egypt this year. The reprocessing really was just to bring it back to how it was in reality.

This was at the other end of the day with the sun disappearing over the mountains behind Sharm-el-Sheikh airport. As the sun dropped out of sight you get these rays of light in the clouds due to the difference in angle.

Canon Digital Ixus 500, 1/400 second, f/2.8

This photo was hastily snapped just before we dived on Jackson Reef. It's about 5am in the morning; the early start was so we could see the sharks that are around this early.

This is one of a collection I've re-processed with Photoshop.

Canon 400D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/60 second, f/4, ISO 100

Canon 400D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/10 second, f/11, ISO 100

Canon 400D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/30 second, f/4, ISO 100

Canon 400D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/60 second, f/4, ISO 100

This is the moment that Tony Blair moved into Connaught Square at the weekend during our engagement party. Unfortunately I didn't have a paparazzi style long lens on the camera so couldn't get a really tight shot.

Canon 400D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/250 second, f/4, ISO 400

Canon 400D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/500 second, f/4, ISO 100

It should be noted that I'm not very good at naming things so if you can come up with a better title for this picture I'd appreciate it.

Taken at a friend's house... I liked the contrast of yellow and blue.

Canon 400D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/25 second, f/4, ISO 100

Canon 400D, Canon 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 lens - 49mm, 1/200 second, f/11, ISO 100

Canon 400D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 24mm, 1/125 second, f/4, ISO 100

OK, I took a few pictures whilst we were away; approximately 19GB of pictures... Hence it's taken a little while to process and upload them all. Anyways, for those that are interested I've narrowed the selection down to 500 or so of the best ones and put them on Flickr. You can see them here.

The whole trip was fantastic, managing to fit a little bit of everything into the two and a half weeks away. We drove from Cape Town to East London and back then spent a couple of nights in Clarens, Free State. A total distance of about 2200 miles.

In detail, the trip looked like:

6^th April 2007 - 06:35 Flight to Amsterdam, arrive 08:55

10:30 Flight to Johannesburg, arrive 21:00

Airport Grand, Johannesburg Airport (The room was very small)

7^th April 2007 - 10:00 Flight to Cape Town, arrive 12:10

Nelson’s Guesthouse (Lovely place, great views, well located)

209 High Level Road, Sea Point, Cape Town, 8005 Tel: 021 4332602 Cell: 0728 752077

10^th April 2007 - De Oude Ryneveld (Right in the center)

71 Ryneveld Street Stellenbosch 7600 Tel: 083 2984 856 Cell: 083 2984 856

11^th April 2007 - Tranquillity Lodge (Great getaway)

130 St' Michael's Avenue, Nature's Valley, 6602 Tel: 044-531 6663 Cell: 0832 645221

12^th April 2007 - Stumble Inn (Fantastic theme rooms)

31 Princess Alice Drive, Nahoon, East London, 5201 Tel: +27 43 735 3532

13^th April 2007 - Inkwenkwezi Game Reserve (Really good private reserve)

15^th April 2007 - Stumble Inn (again)

31 Princess Alice Drive, Nahoon, East London, 5201 Tel: +27 43 735 3532

16^th April 2007 - Yellowwood Lodge (A little old fashioned but very nice)

18 Handel Street, PO Box 2020, Knysna 6570 Tel: 044 3825906 yellwood@global.co.za

17^th April 2007 - The Highstead Manor (Serviced apartment for 4)

Crn Highlevel Road & St.Johns Road, Sea Point'fresnaye' 8060

Tel: +27 21 4396040 Cell: +27 837 629121

20^th April 2007- 09:40 Flight to Johannesburg, arrive 11:40

Mt Rouge Guest House (Corrie du Preez) (Very peaceful)

152 Bester Street , Clarens, Free State Tel: +27-58-2561207 Cell: 0725129707, 0827827208

23^th April 2007 - 23:30 Flight to Amsterdam arrive 24^th April 10:20

24^th April 2007 - 12:05 Flight to London Heathrow, arrive 12:30

This picture was taken last week overlooking Courcheval 1850. I spent a week with friends in a fantastic chalet run by Ski Power. My skiing is improving but unfortunately Claire fell on her first run of the week. She broke her arm which meant she was out of action for the whole week. Kudos to Norwich Union for sorting everything without fuss, paying the blood wagon directly and even getting an extra seat on the plane next to Claire.

We had to go quite high for decent snow because down in the towns it was distinctly spring like and at times more like water skiing than snow skiing.

As usual I've got a few more pictures which you can find on Flickr. If your a friend or family then there are some additional ones to see as well.

Jools Holland and The Rhythm And Blues Orchestra, Groove Armada, Brazilian carnival dancers, Mexican buffet, champagne, free bar, chill-out zone and 2000 people all under a massive circus big top at Stratfield Saye. The event was awesome and a really cool plus for working at Microsoft. Hopefully the pictures below can give a sense of what it was like. Sorry for the quality though - they were taken from my Smartphone.

We had a customer day this week where we get 50 to 60 customers along and tell them about all the cool stuff being released in the next year or so. Then we go and race around a kart track for a couple of hours. The picture is of me giving my presentation on Office 2007 System and SharePoint. I had a couple of demos on Windows Workflow and Excel Services to show plus some slides on the new XML file formats, Ribbon UI and other enhancements.

I've just got back from a very relaxing week on a farm in Cornwall with friends and am not looking forward to returning to work. I guess it has to happen though... Anyways, I have a large number of photos from the week but as yet no captions.

In addition my camera also takes pretty good web-sized movies so here are a couple of my favourites:

• Cally and Angus showing off one lunchtime
• Angus attempts to blow bubblegum

The Photo Gallery is out of order at the moment. I seem to be having some nGallery issues with it. Thanks to everyone who mailed me to let me know.

[Edit: Actually, it's up and down like a whore's drawers so try your luck with it...]

It's August and it's hot so, by tradition, the British public head to the beach. As a slight alternative I went to Hurst Castle which stands on a spit of land between the south cost and the Isle of Wight. It was originally built by Henry VIII as part of a coastal defence chain. The castle was used right though to the Second World War with various upgrades and additions along the way.

As the castle on a shingle spit there is no road and you have to walk 1½ miles down loose rocks. Very tiring but worth it. I took the camera and have loads of pictures so see what its all about.

Today was the company family day. This year it was held at Highclere Castle. Rather than talk about it, I took some snaps...

I have a couple of photos of the keynote, but I'm pretty awful with the camera so have a look at someone who is a lot better.

The Keynote.

What is the sound of 6000 people drumming?

The SmartPhone demo.