I was contacted relatively recently by the editor of Outdoor Photography Magazine who asked to carry out an interview for their series of landscape Photographers which has now been published in the May edition of the magazine.

One of the reasons I enjoy leading workshops so much is because you often get asked questions you're not really expecting or haven't thought about and in the same way being interviewed by a complete stranger about my approach and images is an opportunity to think a little differently about things. Having provided a good number of images for them to choose from, it's also usually a complete surprise which ones are selected for print. Once again, an image I'd almost forgotten about from Ratcliffe Power Station in Nottinghamshire made the headline which made me go back and look at the rest of the set I took on that day.

Anyway, the interview is captured below though you might need a magnifying glass to read it! Regardless, it's definitely something I would look forward to doing again soon and I'd like to thank the guys at Outdoor Photography for the opportunity which was a great honour.

Following the news of my two Commended images at The Sony World Photography Awards 2013, it was a great pleasure to be contacted on the back of that by Nigel Morton, an editor from the Picture Desk at The Times, who asked if they could run a feature on some of my images to appear in the digital edition for iPads, Tablets and mobiles...

The images from my Lumière Gallery which are all shot in Northern France have proved popular and The Times have now published ten from the set. I'm very pleased that this has been a mixed gallery of colour and monochromatic photographs because they bring the whole mood of the location together, whether I'm trying to capture the the soul of the landscape or the wonderful light and palette that I've experienced over there. To be published in such a prestigious title which is known around the world is a huge honour for me as a photographer. For those who don't have a suitable device to view the images, screen shots of the feature are below - I must say I do think they work very nicely together...

I am very pleased to announce that two of my long exposure images have been Commended at the Sony World Photography Awards 2013.

This year there were in excess of 120,000 submissions in the Awards and I am told that my two photographs were picked from a staggering 54,851 entries in the Open competition - I am always humbled by the mention of numbers like that. 

What is particularly pleasing for me is that incredibly both were taken at Brighton during the Michael Levin Workshop I attended last August. Was there a hint of magic there from the living legend that is Mr Levin? Who knows, but regardless, given that entries came from 170 different countries I guess Brighton's appeal just gained a little extra kudos for having something photogenic.

The first image mentioned is Dark Water. I very much like this one, it was the initial composition I wanted to process once I had returned from the Levin weekend. After the formalities of the workshop had concluded, the highly inspirational Michael Diblicek and I decided to take the quaint Victorian electric train from Brighton Pier up to the Marina to shoot this wonderful alien looking structure around the edge of the harbour. It's basically a sophisticated sea defence but has a delicious curvaceous design that just begs for the long exposure treatment.

There had been pretty wild conditions all weekend, and I remember sheltering in a dip well away from the sea trying to stabilise my Nikon 70-200, fighting to stop my umbrella from turning inside out and protect my gear from the squally continuous sea spray in the process. Images sometimes take a lot of effort! I still don't know how, but I managed a sharp 95 second exposure at 160mm which was no mean feat given the conditions - the final result is of course just below. I certainly took my time on processing this one later - it had about thirty hours of work put into it and even had the critical eye and assessment from my good friend Joel Tjintjelaar a couple of times for which I remain very appreciative of. I wanted to get this one just right because it was the basis of other images to follow - I guess in the end this recognition means it was all worth it...

The second image, and it does seem to make a nice pair with the view of Brighton Marina, is a shot of the slowly decaying old Brighton West Pier - which I titled Shadow Dance. What is surprising for me here is that I've seen probably every possible composition of the West Pier. It's a landmark that's as famous as Dorset's Durdle Door to British landscape and long exposure specialists so in many ways I guess it's an achievement to have something so easily recognisable receive some attention in this way.

I was only down in Brighton this week leading a 1-2-1 session and this iconic structure was of course part of the day. It's so important for such a heavy looking subject as this to be lifted out of the water giving it just a little more space to breath. There are so many iron struts and crossing pieces of dark metal that it is in danger of disappearing into a dark blob in your frame. That's why to me it is essential to take up a low position and shoot the pier during a receding tide, at least giving it a chance to stand out of the sea and hold the viewers attention for a minute or two with all of its intricate detail.

At the moment I shot this there was some great side light from the left which certainly helped raise those mid-tones a little and of course those seagulls who were rapidly performing The Tango and plucking shellfish from from top of this small ledge created a rare bit of foreground interest in the scene. I don't often include multiple aspects to my compositions because it raises questions of competing elements but in this case I just couldn't ignore the sea birds who may of course ultimately grabbed the attention of the judges. The other key aspect here was that despite having a pretty twisted skeleton, maintaining what remains of all those vertical supports was critical, and my Nikon 45mm f/2.8 PC-E Tilt Shift lens once again allowed me to retain that essential 'real world' look, just as the eye sees it. 

I'll be running a group workshop in the Brighton area on Saturday 13th April where you will be able to see and photograph these and the other wonderful subject matter on show in the locale. You can read more details of the event BY CLICKING HERE. Alternatively if you would prefer a 1-2-1 session to work on your composition and technical skills, please use the CONTACT FORM to drop me a line so that we can discuss your requirements. I'm sure you will find my half day and full day rates very reasonable.

What did Adobe do and why do I care?

Bottom line - Adobe certainly seem to have dug a huge hole for themselves yesterday! Whilst chatting to other photographers on Twitter yesterday, a link popped up amongst other tweets declaring that Adobe had listed a number of ageing products including Photoshop CS2 as free downloads with fully working serial numbers. No trial versions, no catch. As someone who has worked around Adobe for more years than I would care to admit to, I found that piece of news incredibly hard to believe - after all Adobe are the pass masters of getting their users on the upgrade path, squeezing every last penny out of everyone, and not surprisingly are targeted by pirates across the world as a result. But regardless of what anyone says, their products are high quality and in demand because no one does it quite like Adobe.

For the photographer on a budget, this could change their workflow a lot. I would rather work on a full version of Photoshop any day than use Elements or even Adobe Lightroom which I don't like, so this release by Adobe is very significant for photographers everywhere in my view.

The other thing is I would never personally touch a pirated version of an Adobe product, or any of software manufacturer for that matter (yes, really). My 20 year experience as a Senior IT Service Manager demonstrated time and again how such software is often loaded with spyware, contains viruses and is generally bad news for your PC or you (there is no free lunch in this world) and it's no accident that my machines have never been hacked or someone suddenly has access to my Paypal account somewhere as a result.

So what are Adobe up to? Well according to their user forums it was Adobe's plan to shut down a number of back end product activation servers to save themselves some administration costs on software products which are approaching a decade out of date. So in order to facilitate this, they needed to make available a bunch of standard serial numbers for users who had previously purchased the software to use which didn't require back end validation or activation. What happened next? A software free for all across the world as the message was reproduced on technology forums and websites, Facebook and Twitter that Adobe was just giving it all away for free. Disaster for Adobe or clever marketing? Well who knows.

One thing remains clear - there was no declaration on the download page yesterday that this was not a giveaway, although you needed an Adobe ID and logon to download the software, which I used. Today, probably realising what they have done, rather than slamming the gate shut now the horse has bolted, you no longer even need the basic Adobe ID to download the software...

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html

So for the time being, it's currently my personal view that Adobe's tack has changed and they have had no choice but to make it look like their intention is to supply the said software in the list for free, as a sizeable gesture of good will and to get users everywhere interested in their products. Well I guess if you believe that you'll believe anything - this situation remains under review and I will report later if this changes, if indeed it does. One thing though, I doubt very much whether you can use this software to upgrade from, Adobe will have seen to that much, so these are sort of orphan products - use and enjoy them for what they are I say.

But does it work?

There are already early reports floating around that Photoshop CS2 for the MAC doesn't work on the latest Operating System. Too bad. So I decided to give this a test on my PC - I'm only really interested in Photoshop CS2 in their 'giveaway' list, a product that was launched in April 2005 (I needed to check Wikipedia for that one) and that is already very nearly 8 years ago as I write this. The digital photography age was just gathering some real momentum, PC's were positively ancient by today's standards and the Windows Operating System of choice at that time was still Windows XP. In fact the first 64bit version of Windows XP was about to be released so everything we used on a desktop was still pretty much embedded in the 32bit world. Why does any of that matter? Speed. Speed is the name of the game for processing anything and everything. There's a reason why I'm typing this on my 64Bit PC today - I'm running a Windows 7 Dell XPS PC with 3TB of hard drive space and 16GB of RAM. But then again my camera of choice is the 36MP Nikon D800 which creates pretty big RAW files and a 16Bit Photoshop layer that eats up just under 200MB of hard drive space. So surely going back to a piece of software like CS2 will be just a waste of time right? No point? It won't even install on a 64bit operating system today will it? You can't use RAW can you? Your newest PSDs won't open in CS2 will they? You can't use D800 files with it can you? Well let's find out...

Install Experience...

1.  Download the install file and copy the key supplied by Adobe and fire up the install. Enter your username and something in the Organization field and put the serial number into the field provided and click Next.

2.  Just leave the default install folder as it is and hit Next...

 3.  Leave the default file associations and click Next...

4.  Now just click the Install button...

5.  All looking fine so far...

6.  All finished, no errors, ifs or buts...

The Acid Test - Will It Open & Operate?

So, first go... it certainly initialises:

You then get greeted with a Registration Prompt - I clicked on Do Not Register...

Then the Welcome splash...

And finally to check for updates - not surprisingly there weren't any to apply...

So all good so far. No complaints from my PC, no immediate crashes. It's genuinely going better than I thought it might. Now to open a file. Now many of my PSD files (Photoshop format files) have been created in version CS5 or later so my first concern is whether CS2 will even be able to open one of these...

Result, a CS5 PSD file opens straight away:

The interface looks and feels a little dated next to the latest version and sure one or two functions are missing as you'd expect, but it's functional and working very nicely. It's certainly stable and although it's working in 32bit mode, the hardware in my PC is certainly working well with it, in fact it positively benefits from it. So what next? Lets try to install Silver Efex Pro 2 over it so I have at least the one filter I can't work without...

After a quick check with on the Nik Software website, it seems that Silver Efex Pro 2 will indeed work with Photoshop CS2. Sure enough, five minutes later, Silver Efex Pro 2 is installed and working with CS2. That's even more significant now because this 'back end' capability and significant part of my processing is also accessible...

So I now have a fully working version of Photoshop with Silver Efex Pro 2 installed, and it opens the latest PSD files. Interesting. The price of this setup so far? The price of Silver Efex Pro 2 - a bargain at around £125 for the full version ($199 US).

But What About The Front End For Opening The Latest RAW Files?

Surely this is where the plan for a cheap high quality workflow falls apart? The Nikon D800 was released less than a year ago, there's no way CS2 will open the RAW files. Well, yes and no. It's true that I made the investment some time ago in Nikon's Capture NX2 as my RAW converter of choice because Nikon's .NEF files are a proprietary format. In simpler terms that means it's a locked down file format - Adobe merely reverse engineer the files to offer RAW support in Photoshop so using the manufacturer's own software is always the way to go in my view. But software like Capture NX2 is another additional expense, and we can work around it even with D800 files for FREE...

How? Another free piece of Adobe's software - the DNG converter. OK, it's not quite the same as using the power of Capture NX2 or the latest RAW interface in Photoshop CS6 but you want this for free right? This is the best cheap (see FREE) method to release the power of RAW files and allow us to process them as 16bit files even in Photoshop CS2. Firstly go to the following link and download the latest version for PC, which is currently v7.2, it's another 100MB file, thank the Lord for broadband:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=106&platform=Windows

Once installed, open the Adobe DNG interface, select the folder with your RAW files in, alter any preferences as you want them and convert the RAW files you want to work on to DNG format...

The DNG format is a Digital Negative File format. DNG files are designed to be transferable and readable at a more generic level and in this case I'm expecting that even though we've just converted a Nikon D800 NEF RAW file to DNG that Adobe Photoshop CS2's RAW interface will now be able to open it, even though the D800 came to market 8 years later than this software was created. Let's see...

Boom! A Nikon D800 NEF to DNG converted RAW file opened up in Photoshop CS2's RAW interface to play with. Now I can edit it in 16Bit mode, make all manner of adjustments I want in Photoshop CS2 and convert to mono in Silver Efex Pro 2. The cost to all of this? The price of a Silver Efex Pro 2 license.

Don't tell me that Digital Photography needs to be expensive - it certainly makes the cost of processing film look even more outdated to me. Who wouldn't be happy with this?

Conclusions...

Yes, in truth I won't be changing my current workflow because I like it and I'm used to it. But even after only 20 minutes the CS2 interface seemed very familiar again and even the keyboard shortcuts I've used for a long time also work. You have the power of layers and those essential tools which don't seem to have changed much for the last 8 years and it's all perfectly stable on my Windows 7 PC. On the whole if you're on a budget you certainly won't be missing much next to the latest and greatest software, and the workflow I've demonstrated here shows you can still use a RAW file for the latest of cameras and even convert to mono with the latest interface in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. That is awesome, awesome value for money from my point of view - let's just hope Adobe don't bring down the shutters. My advice is grab it now...

Just to let you know that further Spring events will be added shortly to my Landscape Photography Workshop programme including top locations and a few opportunities for shooting Bluebells at the stunning Ashridge Estate in Buckinghamshire, a French Coast event (organise your Passport now!!!), and a Dorset workshop encompassing three wonderful locations down there including the iconic Durdle Door, Swanage Piers and Jurassic bay of Kimmeridge. There will also be two events in the North of England encompassing the beautiful Lake District and a long exposure seascape day at Whitby.

Contact me now to register your early interest without any obligation - these will not be expensive events but will all be a great opportunity to build your artistic vision and extend your photography skills. Whether you want to look at composition, long exposure skills, try out Tilt Shift lenses on my equipment or understand your own lenses better, get to grips with an artistic technique like Intentional Camera Movement or just try and understand your DSLR and exposure better by using filters or shooting in Full Manual mode - I can help you with all of this.

Use the links on my Contact Page to register your interest early and make sure you don't miss any of these events!

My Image 22 Carat appears in Issue 13 of the all electronic iPad Magazine Photography Week. Even after three years, this image still gets attention and remains a firm favourite of mine. It's a nice way to close out the year to boot...

The Year...

As the year draws to a close, it's inevitable that we spend time reflecting on our lives and as photographers the journey we have taken through the passing months. It's certainly been quite a big year from my point of view with a lot of changes in approach, equipment and finally ending up by wanting to inspire others and passing on much of what I've learned by launching a programme of workshops.

For those who don't know me, I'm a classic glass is half empty person and while some people might think that's a burden (it is by the way!) it has always driven me to try and do things better and achieve more, regardless of whatever my endeavour is. That brings a certain approach out of me to set ever higher standards for myself and continually force myself to evaluate what it is I'm doing. So at this juncture in the year it would be very easy for me to focus on what I didn't achieve, but based on the last few months in particular I think that would be a bit harsh even by my own usual benchmark.

I think if you had said to me at the start of the year that within twelve months I would have images shown in two national galleries in London, would have been commended in the Landscape Photographer Of The Year competition run by landscape master Charlie Waite, be printed in a landscape photography book you can buy on Amazon, spend a weekend learning from the world class talent that is Michael Levin, pick up representation by Getty Images and end the year by launching my own landscape photography workshops, I think I would have chewed my own arm off for that lot. Even sitting here now and writing this I don't believe I really set out and planned any of that - some of it might be dreams that turned into reality with a bit of effort, but I certainly don't remember thinking that this would be the picture of 2012 for myself.

The Gear...

As I alluded to at the start of this piece, even my equipment has changed. The arrival of the Nikon D800 in the first quarter of the year was a camera which I had been waiting for. Having spent a couple of years with the excellent D700 and built up my full-frame collection of optics, I was waiting patiently for a high resolution landscape body at a reasonable price and finally Nikon came good and blew the rest of the DSLR market away.

Now I am not the sort that is naive enough to think that the D800 really changed my photography, but actually it liberated so many things about my approach - I'm now producing images where I can get away with a 24MP square or a 30MP 16:9 crop from a single frame; I can even produce 100MP panormas with only three frames and that for me is absolutely fantastic. I can finally produce high resolution images which rival Medium Format bodies for quality and detail which cost ten times the price, surpass the relevance of film and print images natively at 300dpi across my lounge wall.

I jumped all over the release of the D800 in March and haven't regretted it for a moment; there's no other body out there right now that can touch it based on its price point and end quality, especially when paired with a lens like the Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 ZF.2 which I also added this year. That particular combination proving to be pretty incredible this year for me - an example image below and one of my favourites from Dorset, I'm often left looking at the back of the LCD in disbelief at how beautiful some of the frames are it produces...

2013?

So what's in store for 2013? Well with only a few days away to the start of the year I already have three objectives which I want to undertake;

• The first will be an attempt to land myself an Associateship with the Royal Photographic Society. My Arcadian series will hopefully be the catalyst for achieving that one.
• Secondly I want to run workshops in at least two mainland European locations, the first will probably get a dry run before the end of the year anyway, so we'll see how that goes.
• Finally something which I didn't do this year which I keep promising myself is to get to grips with a sizeable solo exhibition, which I think my work towards the Associateship will help with.

That is of course if the world doesn't implode tomorrow when the Mayan Calendar comes to an end - that would be an irritating inconvenience to my plans :)

Rogues Gallery

So which images are my favourites of the year? It's always an almost impossible pick for me, each image I work on is an extension of myself, moments which I've usually revelled in. I'm going to select five I'm particularly happy with here:

#5 - Legacy. This is a great tree I've visited over the last couple of years that can be found on The Fosse Way in South Warwickshire. It was a misty summers morning and the cloud was perfect for a long exposure, providing me with a great opportunity to use all of that resolution goodness with the Zeiss 21mm for this long exposure, but I just love that stubble in this one.

#4 - Angels And Demons. This just had to be in the top five - a recent image caught towards the end of the year in my trip to North Devon while I was out location scouting, giving rise to this good v evil struggle which I imagined. The stark black jagged rocks made such a wonderful contrast to the clean white water which was cascading over the cliff and because it had been raining the light reflected beautifully from all of those edges.

#3 - Boy On The Beach. I love scale and space in my images as I'm sure you can tell, and this one benefited from that magnificent storm light you sometimes get at the coast. This is a strong Tilt Shift image taken with my 45mm PC-E; it was hand held, poorly levelled in the RAW file (straightened horizon in this one!) and because the wind was buffeting me sideways it's also actually slightly out of focus too. But it's all about a shared moment, what it felt like in those seconds - as if this was a projection of myself onto the beach. That makes it a very powerful image for me personally, it might get lost in translation to others but without question one of my favourites of the year.

#2 - Fantastic Voyage. This is certainly a favourite of mine this year - I absolutely love the concept of the collision of the three natural elements here - the textured land, the serene sky and the soft edges of the sea. But almost out of sight and seemingly insignificant is the boat - the stamp of the human race on the world; so seemingly small, yet so powerful. I wonder how many people understood what it was I was trying to show here...

#1 - Arcadian. So here it is, my favourite image of the year. It's not here by accident and I wish I had twenty more just like it. This is the minimalism which I crave, I love the simplicity of this shot, its whole atmosphere, toning and textures. It might not be everyone else's favourite but despite my earlier hesitation this is an easy pick for me this year. This is an image which has launched a whole project for me, something which has bound my thoughts and released me from self doubt. Even Mr Levin said he enjoyed this one, the whole mystery to scale and references to what we're looking at here are pretty much removed and it's a look I will continue to try to bring to my compositions going forward.

Thanks to one and all...

So that's it, my 2012 pretty much over. As always I look forward to 2013 with a mixture of trepidation and excitement - if the next year is as successful I think I'll be doing pretty well but if anything I have more confidence than I did a year ago which can't be a bad thing.

Lastly, here's wishing you all a merry Christmas and prosperous New Year and a big thank you for all your comments, competition votes, endless support and sharing again this year!

New Zealand Based writer and photographer, Andrew Gibson has recently written a great eBook around Long Exposure titled Slow with some help from photograhers like Joel Tjintjelaar and Doug Chinnery.  To follow this up Andrew is running a series of interviews with other long exposure specialists and I'm very pleased to announce that he's picked me as his first candidate.

The full interview can be found on his blog BY CLICKING HERE - you can find out more about my views on composition, why I prefer working in mono, vision and so on.  I've already obtained his eBook which is an absolute bargain.  Enjoy! 

It's certainly not every day you see your name under an image being beamed across London from the roof of a building hosting a national Landscape Photography exhibition with your image in!  This was certainly a top moment which I shared with Mrs B at the Landscape Photographer Of The Year Awards 2012 at the National Theatre on London's South Bank.  The projection could be seen  across Waterloo Bridge with all of the passing traffic and pedestrians being given a great visual treat.

The printed exhibition inside was superb, the work done by Epson in setting it up was wonderful - the quality of the prints were truly excellent.  The exhibition is free to view and runs to 12th January 2013, well worth a visit if you're anywhere near London...

This is a great new magazine that's been made for the iPad.  I've already been featured once recently with an architectural image and now 22 Carat has been featured in their inspiration of the week feature... it's been one of my favourite images for a long time.

I'm very pleased to announce that my image Departure has been Commended in the 2012 Landscape Photographer Of The Year, lead by founder and British Landscape Master, Charlie Waite.

The image will be on show at the National Theatre Gallery in London between 12th November 2012 and 12th January 2013 as part of the Landscape Photographer Of The Year exhibition.  I'm also very pleased to say that as a commended image, it will be part of the digital projection will be beamed onto the building.

A great privilege of being selected ahead of more than 20,000 other images is that you also appear in the official Awards book.  Departure features on Page 135 of the 2012 book (Collection 6) in the Urban View Category as shown below, it's a great honour for me to appear in such a prestigious compilation - I often reach for these books as inspiration.  The ever popular Landscape Photographer Of The Year book is available now for purchase from Amazon BY CLICKING HERE.

I'm very pleased to announce that I'm about to launch an ongoing programme of Landscape Photography Workshops, committed to helping to develop artistic vision, photographic composition and technique in some of the most inspiring locations Britain has to offer. Watch this space for some exciting announcements very soon and contact me now to register your early interest!

One of my images Discography was requested to appear in a new iPad magazine Photography Week from the same publishers of Digital Camera Magazine and N-Photo.

Tim Ashley has been kind enough to write about and ask me to contribute to a guest piece about my photography on his Blog.  It's always great to be asked to contribute to anything like this - there's nothing I like more than sharing my views or some incite in how I approach my photography and Tim is a great wordsmith to boot.

CLICK HERE to read the piece on his website.

I'm pleased to confirm a new agency partnership with Getty Images who have approached me and asked to initially licence 16 images. It's not something I went looking for and to a certain extent shows that both patience and concentration on the quality of your work will eventually bring the attention of others to your door.  In this case though Getty are the biggest image agency in the world and after careful consideration I've decided to accept.  They may not be to everyone's liking but I figured it would be both pretty stupid and churlish not to accept bearing in mind who they are and what their reach is, especially as these images would simply be left merely for public consumption on this website and not doing too much else.  I really only enter a handful of competitions a year so it's great to find an outlet for these images.  

There is some irony here however, having had only mono images short listed in competitions such as the Take A View Landscape Photographer Of The Year and the Sony World Photography Awards for the second year running, it is Getty who have asked to license a chunk of my colour work, rather than any mono.  It's a nice consolation prize and I'm pleased that they want to give these images a go. One of the images they've selected is In an English Wood - in my mind a pretty nice image but seemingly a little unloved by others apart from Getty...

Click here to view and license my images on Getty

For the second year running I have been short listed for the Take A View Landscape Photographer Of The Year.  This is pretty much the premier league of Landscape Photography competitions covering a number of different subject groups and run by Charlie Waite.  My 2012 short listed entry is Departure in the Urban View category, a favourite of mine taken in the latter of of 2011 in Coventry City Centre.  I'll find out later in the year if it progresses any further...

Some great news today, I'd told my photograph Stories From Atlantis has been hand selected from thousands of images by curators of the Getty Images Gallery in London to appear in a special exhibition being shown between 10th September and 6th October 2012.  

The exhibition, in partnership with Nikon, is showcasing photographic talent from around the world.  I've been invited to a Private View evening to see my final printed and framed image, together with the rest of the collection of course, so it's another night out in the West End which is always great fun.  Very much looking forward to this one...

I've been berated by a few people not to have sorted this earlier, and I agree it's been a while in organising this one.  Admittedly it's just been about the time and effort to get the facility off the ground within this website, but I'm very pleased to say that Limited Edition prints are now available to order.

I've added some words to describe the process and fulfilment here: http://russbarnes.co.uk/prints.

Hopefully that covers all bases, but if any of you have any questions, or requests, please contact me!

And just to prove it's all real, here's one I made earlier :)

I've been fortunate enough to add the wonderful 36MP Nikon D800 to my gear lately and to make the most of it a Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 ZF.2 into the bargain too.  The limited time I've had so far with them (thanks to the foul weather of late) just leads me to confirm what a genuinely wonderful combination this will prove in time.

Of course, I already own two of the best prime lenses which Nikon make too in the all manual 24mm f/2.5 PC-E and 45mm f/2.8 PC-E.  Both of these are looking pretty incredible in combination with the D800 too, the image below here one being taken with the 45.  The resolution of the D800 just goes on and on and for me it's a landscape photographer's dream.  I'll be sure to offer up a small gear review of all of my gear sometime soon - I get so many questions these days from curious people regarding Tilt Shift, especially since the D800 was announced.
 

Just received some very welcome news this afternoon - my image Stories From Atlantis has won Nikon UK's National In-Frame Monthly competition for January, which is subject to a public vote. This is my first competition success of 2012 and I'd like to thank everyone that took the time to vote for my image.

As well as winning one of Nikon's cameras, my image will be published to Nikon's user base in their monthly news update which is fantastic exposure and something I've wanted to achieve for some time.  It's only my second entry in the competition, my first image Beyond The Red Sea was runner-up in the November 2011 competition.  I'm now one step closer to achieving Marcin Bera's record of two monthly wins - it must be a good sign of things to come - Marcin shot to fame with his wonderful seascape images which have received high acclaim in the Take A View Landscape Photographer Of The Year.