Last night I decided to have another attempt at the Avoca beach sunrise photos I tried for just after Christmas. Again the forecast was mostly fine so I got everything organised and woke up at 4:45am.

It turned out that there was extensive cloud cover and the sunrise was nowhere to be seen. I decided to go ahead anyway and capture a few images. Due to the cloud cover I focussed on shooting some long exposure shots of the waves and rocks and decided to produce my first published HDR (High Dynamic Range) images.

I have experimented with HDR a very limited amount before so producing this kind of image is fairly new to me. I initially used the Photoshop CS3 Merge to HDR tool with the photomatix plugin for photoshop. I was unimpressed with the results of this approach so instead I moved to using the stand-alone photomatix software which yielded much more pleasing results.

Using the photomatix software is reasonably simple and only involved a few steps. Firstly, you select the images to generate the HDR image. Next, the tone mapping must be performed. In this step you can determine the final look of your image by using the Details Enhancer method or the Tone Compressor method. I'd recommend saving the HDR image before performing any tone mapping as this means you can try multiple variations to find which suits you best.

Today I've released 2 new images: "Ocean Mist" and "North Avoca Beach". As usual these images are available to members first so head to the gallery and login or create an account if you don't yet have one.

Finally, I'd love to hear your thoughts on these 2 new images so please leave comments on this site or on redbubble.

I can home last night and checked my email to find that I had made my first sale on RedBubble. I've been a member on RB for almost a month now and haven't really been pushing my work outside this site and RB so it's great to know that somebody out there likes my work. I was a bit disappointed to find out that I'm not told who actually made the purchase. It would've been nice if I could send them a bit of a thank you email but not to worry.

The sale was for my Taste of Malaysia Calendar which show cases a collection of images taken in Malaysia, predominantly Sabah. There's 13 images in total (1 for each month and a cover image) and they range from close up shots of wildlife to landscape shots taken at the top of Mt. Kinabalu. I must admit I have been meaning to purchase one of these calendars for myself.

Hopefully this sale is the beginning of many to come.

Tonight I've uploaded 4 new photos to my RedBubble account including shots from South Korea, Japan and one I took last night after swimming through the mud.

Head to my account at RedBubble to check them out.

I really should get stuck in to finishing my photo gallery software!

Some exciting news today. The new Central Coast & Hunter group I requested on RedBubble has been approved and created. I will be co-hosting the group with Mike Salway and it should open up some good opportunities for photographers and artists who live on or have been to the Central Coast.

This group show cases art (particularly photography) that is related to the central coast and hunter regions of NSW, Australia. The group includes all kinds of photography, art, writing and journals as long as they are related to the central coast/hunter.