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As the year draws to a close it’s the perfect time to look back at my videos from the year.

For those of you who like statistics, I uploaded 53 video tutorials to my YouTube channel during the past 12 months, which have had just over 4.75 million views in total this year, which is 13000 views per day. With a mixed bag of Photoshop, photography and review videos, I suppose it;s inevitable that some videos will be more popular then others. So here are the winners and the losers from the class of 2011.

Most watched video from 2011
Standing head and shoulders above everything else is my Fractured image effect Photoshop video. With over 110,000 views and 1260 “Likes” it’s easily my most popular video of the year.

Most Talked about video from 2011
When I say talked about I mean comments left by YouTube viewers. Once again there’s a clear winner, “Timelapse Photography tips from start to end” may not have the snappiest title but it’s had almost 250 comments.

Longest Video from 2011
The shortest video of the year lasted less then a minute, but the longest ran for almost 23 minutes. Many of you might remember I spoke at Photoshop World in Florida earlier in March 2011 and “Photoshop CS5 top 5 new features” was my way of rehearsing a small part of the live presentation.

Most disliked video from 2011
Of course not everyone likes everything I publish and on YouTube there’s a dislike button to anonymously vent your displeasure. A close fought race with 9 dislikes each, the winners are “Fractured image effect” and “Super quick painterly effect”

My favourite video of 2011
Finally I have to choose the one video that I’ve enjoyed the most in 2011. This year that’s a really tough choice as I’ve really enjoyed sharing both my Photoshop and photography knowledge, but it’s the Photography videos that I find I can watch time and again. In 2011 I made videos in some amazing locations… in the sewers of Brighton, at the modern studios of Hassleblad and even whilst relaxing on my holiday in Norfolk.

So which was my favourite? Gatwick Aviation Museum – 15 Minute Photo Challenge. Why? Well it was a bitterly cold day, so cold that the batteries failed on both the video camera and audio recorder. The weather was terrible for photography with flat lighting and blank grey skies. None the less the location was so amazing that I saw great photos everywhere I turned.

New for 2012
So what’s coming up next year? More 15 Minute Photo Challenges, more Photoshop, more Lightroom, more Elements… I hope you keep watching

Colours can be a very subjective thing, I might process a picture and push the colours towards the warm side, where as you might process the same picture but process the colours a bit cooler. On their own both pictures will look perfect, but viewing them side by side will highlight the colour difference.

Now you might ask the question, does that really matter? To which my answer would often be, no. If you’re happy with the colour then that’s fine. However there are certain times when getting the correct colour is absolutely vital.

Perfect colour rendition is vital if you’re a record photographer shooting, for example, a painting for a catalogue. But how many of us do that? No, the place I need perfect colour is shooting portraits and that’s why I use a grey card.

In my last blog post I reviewed the WhiBal card from Michael Tapes Design. In this post I’ll show you how I use the card in my Lightroom workflow.

Earlier in the year I had the chance to spend a day at the Hasselblad studios in London. I got some hands on time with their top of the range H4D-50 camera and shoot some photos. I also squeezed in some time to record a couple of videos. The first was on getting the perfect white background and this video is all about getting three looks from just one light.

When I first started studio lighting I made the classic mistake of buying four lights, opening all the boxes and setting all of them up at once. It was roughly at that point I realised that lighting was clearly much harder then I had first thought. There were lights pointing everywhere and despite several attempts, getting any sort of balance to the light was just to much for me to figure out.

So that’s why now, when I’m training photographers in studio lighting, I always start with just one light. From experience I’ve found that one light works wonders for learning the essentials of studio lighting and as you’ll see in the video below, there’s still plenty of creative options to be had.

If you’d like to learn more about studio lighting I run one to one (or small group) training sessions at my studio in West Sussex.

Back in September 2011 I held a camera training session at the Goodwood Revival. If you missed it, check out my blog post here.

I was guests of Geoff & Dan who were kind enough not only to arrange entry for us all, but also access to the reserved display area. That meant we could get up close and personal with some amazing cars.

Recently both Dan and Geoff sent me a load of their images, so I’ve thrown them together to make a short slideshow created with Proshow Producer.

If you watch closely you’ll see a slightly strange photo of me, Geoff & Dan (and no, we’re not the ones wearing the blue skirts)

There are many ways to turn a colour photo into a mono masterpiece in Photoshop, but in this tutorial I aim to keep some of the original colour and bring back through the black and white effect.

To achieve the final image I’ll be using the Color Range, which is an often overlooked selection tool that’s been around in Photoshop for a very long time. So if you’ve never tried it before, now’s a great time to give it a whirl.