So here they are, although not in any order in particular, other than chronological.

First up is an image I made in Spinningfields, Manchester that I submitted in the Urban View category of the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011 competition, which was subsequently shortlisted.

The Avenue, Manchester - Shortlisted for Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011

Also in January I made the image below with Charlie in Castlefield with one of my favourite modifiers, the Lastolite Ezybox. Details here

Charlie, Castlefield

Patrick with his guitar on the roof of the Arndale car park before the security guards came along. Blog post here

Patrick with his guitar on the roof of the Arndale Car Park, Manchester

Maltese street scene – First trip to Malta this year. Blog post here.

Typical street scene in Victoria on the Island of Gozo, Malta

Kayleigh, Trafford Park with the moon. Blog post  here

Kayleigh

Second trip to Malta this year. Blog posts here and here

Doorway, Zejtun, Malta

Anna – “Waiting for a bus?” with some very carefully placed SB900s – blog post here

Waiting for a bus?

Lighthouse, Vilamoura, Portgual. Blog post here and on variable neutral density filters here

View of the breakwater at Vilamoura, Portugal with a lighthouse at the end

Manchester Central Library – post here

Manchester Central Library at sunset

Jenson Button in his McLaren Mercedes tears up Deansgate, Manchester. Post here

Jenson Button

The Lake District. Post here

View up The Struggle in the Lake District on an Autumn morning

Derwent Valley. Post here

Tree in the Derwent Valley, High Peaks

And finally a shoot I did with Sophie and Pat in mid December that I haven’t yet blogged about. Post to follow in the New Year.

Pat & Sophie

So in retrospect I’m more than happy with the quality of what I’ve produced this year, though I do feel that I need to up the quantity next year. And in upping the quantity I’m pretty certain that this will also see an improvement in the quality too. I ought to write a post on my plans for 2012 too. For one, it’ll give me something to be held to, and it’ll also help me to thrash out my thoughts and plans for the next year of my business and where I want to take it. So you can look forward to this in the coming weeks.

Finally, for 2012 I’ll be releasing desktop wallpapers for your personal use. You can download January’s here in 3 separate sizes. There’s 2560 x 1440, 1920 x 1200 & 1440 x 900. Simply click the appropriate link and right click to save to your desktop.

NeilAlexander_JanuaryDesktop - 1440x900

As this’ll be my final post for 2011, I’ll sign off by saying that it’s been a fantastic year for me photographically speaking and I hope that 2012 is even better.
Enjoy the celebrations, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Wishing you a prosperous 2012.
Neil

Typical street scene in Valletta, Malta (Click to view larger)

The image above, from memory was taken on the same street as this one, but for this image I just wanted to capture the chaotic feel of the plethora of bay windows. Coming from the UK where the buildings and streets are so relatively ordered and construction is so rigidly controlled, to see scenes like this almost throws me into panic mode. Maybe I have a bit of an obsessive-compulsive slight to my character and I do kind of crave order so when I am presented with a visual such as this I must make a photograph of it. Also I suppose there is a degree of contrast and dissimilarity to what I’m used to here which is another compelling reason for me to hit the shutter button. As with any other photographer, I always find it easier to make photographs of “things” that are different to what I’m used to seeing. The most difficult place for me to make an inspiring image is in my own back yard so to speak. Change and departure are easy. Routine and similarity are so much harder to do. Is that one of the reasons I love travel photography? Because it’s easier, artistically speaking? Possibly.

Below Mediterranean Street on the outskirts of Valletta Harbour (Click for larger)

To see more of these latest images, swing by the gallery here.

I’ve also added a few more to my gallery here.

HDR image of a 1970's Rover 2000 TC in Malta

The Maltese are big to the point of fanatical on old British motor cars. They’re often snapped up as beaten up old rusting hulks in the UK, shipped over to Malta and then painstakingly restored by hand with their new carers having to source parts from their networks all over the world.

These 3 particular cars in question were a Rover 2000 TC, a Triumph Spitfire Mk2 and a pre-war Morris.

I tried to arrange to shoot them as early as possible in the morning in order to minimse the harshness of the light, but even by 8am I could tell that I was going to have my work cut out. Between them these 3 cars have won quite a few awards in various competitions across Europe, so the primary goal of the shoot was to get a few great images of the owners with the cars and trophies. But I’m not going to post these, mainly because I really wasn’t happy with what I ended up with. The clients were thrilled, but I just felt that we could have done better. It was a real struggle to find sufficient shade against a suitable backdrop in a space big enough to drop some lights and make quality imagery. (I only had a couple of SB900s with me and I really needed about 10 times that to balance with the sunlight) The photographs of the cars on their own were much easier to do and I really like them. They’re all 3 or 5 frame HDRs processed in HDR Efex Pro.

HDR image of a pre-war Morris in Malta

HDR image of a pre-war Morris in Malta

HDR image of a 1970's Rover 2000 TC in Malta

HDR image of a Triumph Spitfire Mk2 in Malta

Classic pre-war Morris, Spitfire Mk2 and Rover 2000TC

Back streets of Zejtun, Malta (Click for larger)

On arrival, I unpacked my Think Tank Airport International, loaded up my LowePro S&F gear, and headed straight out to shoot number 1 on the list, which was the nearby town of Zejtun. I knew from experience that around early afternoon the streets would be fairly quiet. I knew the light wouldn’t be great (far from it), but the other option was to take a load off, knock back a Cisk or two and chill out for a couple of hours, but what would be the point of that? I was there to shoot, not to holiday! I figured in advance that the light was going to be harsh with a capital H, and that my best chance of getting anything close to usable imagery was to shoot HDR. Also being that it was just so damn bright, I could easily bracket without a tripod. So that’s what I did.

St. Catherine's Church in the background with the back streets of Zejtun in the foreground, Malta (Click for larger)

So here are a few more samples created using Photomatix -the alignment algorithms are now so good pretty much all the HDR sequences I shot handheld have sequenced beautifully.

St. Catherine's Church in the background with the back streets of Zejtun in the foreground, Malta (Click for larger)

More to come…..

The ancient city of Mdina, Malta at night (Click to view larger)

I’ve finally got round to processing some of my images from my most recent trip to Malta. The top and bottom images were shot in the medieval walled town of Mdina or “Silent City” as it’s often referred to. Mdina was first inhabited around 700BC and is one of the highest points on the island providing stunning views over the surrounding countryside, weather permitting which alas whilst I was there, it wasn’t…..

The top photograph is a 3 frame tripod mounted HDR image processed in PhotoMatix. I shot several groups for this scene, but this is the only one where there are people in it who stood still for long enough (around 30 seconds) to avoid any motion blur. Whilst I quite often like motion blur at night (for example in the bottom image of the group browsing a restaurant menu), this image I felt looked better with a static group. The image below was shot in the streets of Rabat, which is essentially an extension of Mdina, just outside the walls.

The streets of Rabat, Malta (Click to view larger)

I think that this one would have looked a little better had the two people been a little farther apart, maybe either side of the door walking towards each other but by the time I’d spotted them, it was too late and that particular decisive moment had long gone.

The ancient city of Mdina, Malta at night (Click to view larger)

Buried under a mountain of editing again, so it’s short and sweet one more time….

TTFN

Golden Bay, Malta (Click for larger)

Click here to buy a print or license a digital copy of this image.

The weather most certainly didn’t play ball. Every day I was there, first and last light were write offs. Dawn would start hazy and cloudy and then roughly an hour after sunrise, the sun would begin to burn through, and sunset was the same, just in reverse. So it certainly wasn’t for the lack of trying that I didn’t get to tick any of these boxes on my list. I was out for every dawn and made a few decent images but none were really as I’d anticipated. Both the images on this page were taken by the Radisson Blue complex at Golden Bay. I sat with my guide and had dinner in a restaurant overlooking the bay probably an hour and a half before sunset. As we sat down to eat the sun disappeared behind the haze, only to briefly re-appear as I hit the beach just long enough for me to get 2 frames off, and that was it – gone again. No golden last light, no pink or orange hues in the cloud just grey haze. So having traveled all that way, I just had to make the best with what I had without getting too downhearted.

Radisson Blue, Golden Bay, Malta (Click for larger)

Click here to buy a print or license a digital copy of this image.

More on Friday…. TTFN

Maltese window (click for larger)

Click here to buy a print or license a digital copy of this image.

Happy Friday y’all. I had penned an extended blog post on the subject of cable releases and tripods in advance yesterday only for BlogPress to eat it, and I’m afraid that I just couldn’t face trying to extract it from my verbally limited brain again. So today I’ve furnished you with a couple more images from my most recent trip to Malta, and as it’s the end of the month I’ve provided you with a double whammy and included April’s “selected from the web”…

Maltese doors (click for larger)

Click here to buy a print or license a digital copy of this image.

Here’s a few interesting photography related items for April:

Photographers and some photographs worth taking a look at:

• Mariel Clayton – Doll Photographer with a subversive sense of humour.
  Such a dark and inventive photographer, shame the website is so hard to navigate
• http://www.andreaolivo.com/
• Sebastian Kim
  Brilliant fashion / editorial work
• Roaming the Sidewalks of Derby with Street Photographer Bruce Gilden
• Emotional Photographs From The Middle East Revolts
• The Breathtaking Photos Of Spectacular Places On Earth (Earth Hour Special)
• PIETER HENKET PHOTOGRAPHY | Pieter Henket Photography

Tips and techniques that I’d recommend you take a butchers at:

• Choose Your Risk.
  A quite inspiring post from David DuChemin
• 10 Totally New Ways to Play with Instagram | Photojojo
• Marc’s Mini Tip: The Key to a Photograph from Ansel Adams
• Using the Clone Stamp: An Fstoppers Post Production Tutorial by Sean Armenta
• 10 Techniques for Amazing Portraits
• Sunrise Portraits Part II – The Techniques
• It’s Guest Blog Wednesday featuring Rick Dole!
• Sell Your Wedding Pictures to All the Guests
• The Wedding Day Call Sheet: Part 2 – The Afternoon
• The Wedding Day Call Sheet: Part 1 – The Morning

Typical street scene in Victoria on the Island of Gozo, Malta (click for larger)

Click here to buy a print or licence a digital copy of this image.

Once again the top image is a hand-held 5 frame HDR. (See this post for more info) I’d seen this little boy playing in the street, popping in and out of the scene. I guess he was playing with some friends on the street to the left, and I thought his green outfit would add a sufficient accent to this scene to make it a little more appealing to the eye. He was running around a lot, and there was no way he was going to stand still long enough for me to get 5 frames of him that would merge without any ghosting. He didn’t. He’s static in the first 2 of the sequence and then disappeared out in the remainder. Fortunately the last two were the shadow captures of the sequence (I.E. +1 and +2 stops in order to capture detail in the shadows), so with some careful masking in Photoshop using the first frame of the sequence (the “correctly” exposed one) as a layer on top of the Photomatix output, I managed to get him nicely back into the final image.

FISHING BOATS IN BIRZEBUGGIA HARBOUR, MALTA (Click for larger)

Click here to buy a print or licence a digital copy of this image.

This frame was taken at dawn in the harbour at Birzebuggia with the Tamron 70-200 F2.8 out at 150mm. A 7 frame tripod mounted sequence with my ISO pumped up to 800. I did this as even though my camera was static enough to get a solid series, the boats were bobbing around in the water sufficiently to blur in the -3 stop frame, which at 200 ISO would have been around 1/2 second. Cranking my ISO up by 3 stops, meant that the slowest frame of the series was 1/15 second which was just enough to freeze the motion of the bobbing boats. It also meant that I could fire off the 7 frames in under a second producing as little ghosting as possible.

Old man on a bench (Click to view larger)

In an attempt to improve my SEO, and to show off a little more of my work, I’m going to to try and move up to a bi-weekly posting schedule. No, that doesn’t mean I’m going to start posting on transgender topics!
So as part of my new schedule, here’s another couple of images from my recent trip to Malta. They’re both hand-held 5 frame HDR sequences processed in Photomatix and then in Nik’s Silver Efex Pro. Not too much of a back story to the top image, other than I couldn’t resist the guy’s smile. However the image below was a little more interesting….
At midday on the Saluting Battery just below the Upper Barracca Gardens in Valetta they fire a salute from a series of cannons, originally as a time signal for the city of Valetta and the surrounding areas. Unfortunately, I was late arriving and got to the area above the battery to discover the cannons had been removed and there was some restoration work going on. Instead there was a solitary cannon tucked away around behind the cafe and quite a substantial crowd. I managed to get a few frames of the soldiers preparing the cannon, and muscled myself into a position in line with the end of the barrel – I wanted to try and get a shot of the blast itself – it was an experiment ok! I pumped my ISO so I had a real fast shutter speed, steadied myself (hand-held) and waited. Now I knew it was going to be loud as I was probably 10 feet from the gun itself, and as they lit the fuse I began shooting….
Nothing prepared me for the shock, and I literally jumped out of my skin. Though I did manage to keep shooting, the sequence of images look like I must have been waving my camera around all over the place!! The bottom image is the best frame of the series of the blast itself but as you can see, it’s hardly sharp. In fact it’s so blurred I debated whether to post it or not. Moral of the story is twofold; arrive early and either carry ear defenders or bring a tripod and a cable release.
On the plus side, the ringing in my ears did stop eventually…

The canon blast