This shot was taken in Bournemouth when Karen and I were on the Great British Poker Tour. It has just sold as my eighth Enhanced Licence. These licences allow the image to be used for unlimited runs. The good news for the photographer is you get $28(£17) instead of the more numerous subscription sale of 33c(20p). Some places refer to them as an Extended Licences. If you want to sell you own photos read this guide to stock photography.

The High Resolution version of this image is available from Shutterstock

We went for a walk today and Karen spotted this Jew’s Ear Fungus in a small patch of trees. It was taken around midday on a cloudy day in the shade. These are all factors which make it the bluest that daylight gets. The cameras auto white balance does not know its looking at a red object under blue light. In an attempt to balance the image it set the colour temperature to 3850K. Instead of changing the colour temperature a Color Balance layer was used to bring back the hues of the fungus and the wood.

We went for a walk in Rutland today. Karen spotted these Crocuses outside a cottage. I have used Orton Effect and Desaturation layers in an attempt to make the flowers stand out of the busy background.

I had a phone call today telling me this image has won the Cambridge Folk Festivals Reward My Ride photo competition. The brief was to submit an image of green transport to the festival. I did not think the image was good enough for the photoblog but as its won me £300 to spend at my local cycle shop I think it has earned its place.

Karen shot this 1950 Buick on the streets of Cuba. To process the image I used a similar technique to Cuba Chevrolet. I started by using the Orton Effect to give it a bit of a glow. I worked on the dusty red colour. Then I desaturated the background and darkened the edges with vignette.

Karen took this picture in Rutland. Snow is a tricky thing for cameras. The problem is left to themselves they often turn snow grey. This is due to the auto exposure trying to balance the tones in an image. Unless you remember to overexpose you may need to do a bit of work in Photoshop later to make the snow look like snow. I used levels to retouch this image. The upper layers darken the sky slightly in the same way you might use a Graduated Filter. The third levels layer brightens the snow without losing detail in highlights.

Ever wondered what a Pharaoh keeps under his skirt?

This is the Temple of Hathor in Egypt. It was dedicated to the Nubian Queen Nefertari. The image was made with layers of As Shot and HDR blended in various modes.

Karen took this is a shot of me on Hadrians wall. The sky was almost completely blown out in order to capture as much detail as possible in the stones. I managed to squeeze out some more detail by using an extreme tone curve. You can see from the gray bar chart the original image had almost no mid-tones.