Thanks to everyone who entered, Renata, Chris and Doug I´ll be in touch with you shortly.

Also don´t forget you can win a copy of Andrew S Gibxon´s ebook Understanding Exposure in yesterdays post.

But back to the present and it´s about time I released the wallpaper for May so here it is. It shows a rather impressive scene indicating how to support your house if you happen to live on the edge of cliff and have nothing more than a few lengths of bamboo. The image was shot in January in Nagaland, India.

To download the wallpaper select your screen size from below.

Free May 2012 iPhone wallpaper – 320×480 (iPhone/ipad)

Free May 2012 iPad wallpaper – 1024×1024 (Ipad)

Free May 2012 desktop wallpaper – 1024×768 Free May 2012 desktop wallpaper – 1440×900 (Mac book Pro)

Free May 2012 desktop wallpaper – 1366×768

Free May 2012 desktop wallpaper – 1920×1080

Free May 2012 desktop wallpaper – 2560×1440

Ebooks are great, although I have to admit I´ve never really got in to the whole ebook thing, but here I am sitting on train flicking through a copy of the latest release from Andrew S Gibson, photographer and technical editor of the outstanding EOS Magazine. I think the reason I´ve not been downloading these digital books is because I travel so much it´s never easy to find the time, or the motivation to sit down and read, and when I final do I prefer to have a real paper book in my hand and use it as a means to escape these digital screens, however I´m starting to realise that perhaps I´ve been missing out.

This book is aimed squarely at Canon EOS users, I should be made clear from the beginning, although most of what the book talks about can easily be transferred to any DSLR camera. Andrew´s book explains not only why your camera, with all its fancy tools, still gets things wrong on many occasions, it continues to explain how to compensate through examples and simple instructions. The book clearly explains how to get your camera working for you.

“Exposure is a fundamental photography skill and essential to creating high quality image. If you get
the exposure wrong even a Photoshop expert soon bumps up against the limits of what can be fixed in
post processing… This book will help you get to grips with exposure on digital cameras”

The book carefully explains each of the fundamental elements before pulling it all together at the end. It´s packed with almost 80 pages of useful information, with great examples and simple diagrams to help you get your head around the underlying principals of exposure. All in all its a damn good book. To purchase the book simply follow this link

All this for only £7 what more could you ask for ??

A discount? well if you use the code exposure2 when you checkout you´ll receive a £2 discount. But be quick as the code expires at midnight, April 30 2012, GMT. What could be better?

A free copy?? I hear you cry, well here´s your chance. I´ve got 3 copies to give away simply share this post by clicking on one of the links bellow. Deadline is May 4th when I will randomly select the winners – one for Facebook, one for Google+ and one for Twitter.

Winners will be announced here on my blog on Friday 4th April, good luck.

The empty carriages and orderly queues the clean seats and peaceful atmosphere in these images are in total contrast to the madness that is the Indian train, man I miss that place.

….…..

This is where I grew up. This is where I was born and I lived here until my first trip to Asia at the age of 21. Since then I´ve visited many times but never stayed for more than a week or so at a time and strangely enough never really spent much time shooting here despite the fact I know the area so well. I guess I´ve been caught up with travel and visiting exotic places rather than looking for the images that are right here on my doorstep.

I´ve been trying to resolve this situation and fortunately we´ve been blessed with the most amazing spring weather with sunny days and clear blue skies. Knowing that this surely wont last I´ve been out shooting a fair amount recently and thought I should share a handful of the results.

So don´t think you have to travel to stunning places to take great shots, you´ve just got to look for them, I´m sure there are some great locations close to where you live, you just need to look.

I originally posted this piece several years ago but as my blog and it audience has grown so dramatically since then, i thought I´d re-share it with you – I did´nt want any of you to miss out.

As my monthly wallpapers are becoming more and more popular and people are starting to ask me ‘How you do dat Tom..?’ so I thought it might help a few folk out if I shared the process which I go through to make these things.

It’s all created in photoshop and uses just 2 files. The first is the photograph, but not every image works well as a desktop wallpaper, I often find myself shooting specifically for the wallpaper. When I do Im looking for a particular composition, I’m looking for clean, uncluttered, simple, bold images that have space not only for the calendar details but also for the desktop shortcuts (of which I have way too many). You’ll need to crop and resize it to fit your screen resolution.

The other file you’ll need will be a .psd file that will contain the actual calendar info (month name, days of the week etc.)

In this file you’ll need several layers:

- One with text for the month and year name (ie ‘April 2012′).
- One with text for each of the days of the week (Mon – Sun).
- One with text for each of the numbers between 1 and 31 (depending on the month).
- A shape layer which I use as the calendar background and have set the opacity to about 60%. You may wish to add some other effects, such as a shadow or bevel & emboss.
- One with text for a copyright notice layer.
- A Transparant background layer.

Arrange the layers nicely and it should look something like this.

Confused??, Lost?? or lazy?? just download mine

In this file you´ll find a group of layers for every day of the month, as obviously the numbers need to match up with the days. Now when you create your monthly wallpaper all you have to do is check which day of the week the 1st is and open the correct group (you many also need to hide the number 31 for some months and the numbers 29, 30 and 31 for February).

If you’re still with me you should have 2 files open in Photoshop.

In the Days.psd file change the month name and year to match the current month.

Now it should be a simple case of dragging and dropping all the layers from the right group in the Days.psd file into your photo file, keeping them all grouped together makes this much easier. Flatten the image and save this as a .jpg. Browse you hard disk until you find where you saved it (you did save it somewhere sensible, no??) right click and select ‘Set As Desktop Background’

As if by magic, you’ve just created your desktop wallpaper.

As I´m updating my website, yes that´s still going on, I´ve rediscovered some images that I had taken years ago and had forgotten all about, well this is one of them taken way back in 2007.

To download the wallpaper select your screen size from below.

Free April 2012 iPhone wallpaper – 320×480 (iPhone/ipad)

Free April 2012 iPad wallpaper – 1024×1024 (Ipad)

Free April 2012 desktop wallpaper – 1024×768

Free April 2012 desktop wallpaper – 1440×900 (Mac book Pro)

Free April 2012 desktop wallpaper – 1366×768

Free April 2012 desktop wallpaper – 1920×1080

Free April 2012 desktop wallpaper – 2560×1440

Day 5 of the free Lightroom plugin giveaway. Today´s plugin creates a sepia style that can be great for your portraits, to be honest I don´t often process  my images in sepia although I do quite like the effect, perhaps I´ll be doing it more often now I´m playing around with all those lovely new features offered in Lightroom 4.

You should know how this thing works by now, to reveal the download link just click to like this page.

I hope you´re liking these presets, as always I´d love to hear your comments.

Day 4. Ok, another day another free Lightroom preset.

Today’s preset is called Vignetting – again this one is pretty obvious what it does both from the name and the preview. Apart from the nice big fat vignette it also boosts the vibrance and brings out some details in the shadows.

By now you should know how this thing works, to reveal the download link just click to like this page.

I hope you´re liking these presets, come back tomorrow for another preset.

Day 3 of posting a free Lightroom 4 preset. As I stated yesterday these plugins are designed not as a one click solution to all your processing needs but are more to give you a starting point to work from.

I’ve named today´s preset Red Boost, so there are no prizes for guessing what happens to the reds but there are also more subtle changes to the overall feel as you can see in the sample. This preset was created for Lightroom 4 but may still work in previous versions.

Come back tomorrow for another preset.