This is the Arboretum in Nottingham, UK. To create a planet like this you need to capture a 360 degree panorama. For the best results use a wide angle lens and a tripod. To create the planet you will need a little help from Photoshop.

All stock agencies offer some form of enhanced or extended license, in which buyers are given unlimited rights to reproduce photographs, typically over 250,000 times. In the case of Shutterstock the contributing photographer receives $28 instead of 0.25c/0.33c. Its always a nice surprise when you sell one. This is only the sixth enhanced licenses image I have sold compared with over 3000 regular sales.

Download high resolution image.

See other five Enhanced sales

This is a rose from our old garden in Nottingham. I used a time saving trick to desaturate the greenery. Normally you would add a Hue/Sat layer and cut out a mask to get this effect. Instead I added a Black and White layer above the base layer and set the layer above that to lighter colour blend mode. The Black and White layer lets you adjust the brightness of individual colour channels. This setup lets you adjust which colours you want to desaturate. It gives you a lot of control and creates more natural effect than applying a mask to one area. I applied another layer to give a subtle Orton Effect. Finally I added a colour balance layer to achieve the velvet red colour of the original rose and give the leaves a slight tint.

This is my most popular stock photo. It has been accepted at five agencies. Putting the same image at different agencies is a common practice as the photographer keeps the copyright to an image whoever sells it. Since taking it in 2006 is has sold 263 times and made $82(£50) so far. In an attempt to replicate its success I have been to a further five firework displays but not yet taken a shot which has matched its popularity. In the end I took the original image turned it blue and resubmitted it to Shutterstock. The blue version has now sold 42 times.

For this blog post I used the Orton Effect on the images to see what would happen.

This world was made from a 360 degree panorama. Read this to find out how to make your own planet. The biggest problem with making planets out of city panoramas is you need to be far enough away from the buildings to get them all in, and at the same time you need do get enough of the ground in to avoid getting heavy distortion in the centre of the image when you convert it into a planet. Fortunately this spot in Nottingham market square was just right. The clouds at the edge of this image had some distortion so I used the dodge tool set to highlights to isolate the image on pure white.

Happy New Year. This is Benz World’s first creation of the decade. I used Gaussian Blur on the lower text layer to make the glowing effect. Here are more fireworks from this display.