So just over 2 years ago I started my photoblog which was inspired by Chromasia. There’s a few Canon A70 posts in there but basically it was started around the same time as I got my Canon 10D and toured Scotland. Since then I’ve upgraded from Moveable Type to WordPress, from a Canon 10D to a Canon 30D, and from an amateur to a professional. Its been quite a ride. Over the past few months I’ve tried to post 1 single photo a day instead of a block of photos every time I have them. I feel this way is best as it allows people to focus on the one image and when they comment, they’re commenting on that one single image. The other obvious benefit is that I have content for each day. Its not easy to get out shooting every day when you work from home. Oh, why celebrate the 600th post? Well I missed the 500th 🙂

So this entry is a reprocessing of an old shot from the early 10D days. It was a lovely sunset at West Kirby beach and I haven’t seen one as colourful since. I redid it earlier this year and I was happy with the results. In the 7 months since then I’ve learnt a lot more about Photoshop and HDR so I applied it to this shot. I think its quite fitting as I’ve edited this picture before so I can see the progress I’m making with my photography. The original was lacking in contrast and any real post processing. It was kinda flat. The updated version was very red-tinted. I had just used Virtual Photographer to boost the image, but I ended up dumping the program because I wanted to better understand how to use Photoshop. So 2 years on and I have this. It kinda reminds me of Superman. Strong blues, reds, Superman.

I took the original RAW and produced 3 16bit TIFF’s from it, just like in my HDR Guide. Loaded into Photomatix, generated the HDR and tone mapped. Loaded into Photoshop and tweaked a bit more. It really brought out the detail and colours in the original. Its far more vibrant and doesn’t look over the top like a lot of HDR shots can. So there we go. 2 years 2 months on, 600 posts, 259 comments and an article in Professional Photographer. Its been a good 2 years and as I’ve got into the swing of posting 1 image a day, when I’m not uber busy, I’ll continue to do so. Thanks to everyone who’s stopped by over the past 2 years, thanks for all the comments and support.

Oh, I’m still not 100% happy with the name of the site. “Daily Pete” just isn’t perfect. Its ok as a passing though but its just not perfect. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Some site stats;

• Hits this month: 1,068,955
• Hits over the past 12 months: 3,348,257
• Since publishing my HDR article I’m getting 10x the hits.
• Averaging 200 unique visitors a day
• Over 70 subscribers to the RSS feed averaging 600 daily hits
• Best Google Search: “peter carr artist” – I was very moved to see that. People actually see me as an artist, its cool.

You should check out SLOclick for an awesome shot of Formby.