Season's Greetings

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

May your holidays be merry & bright

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A small world seen big

The orchid, beautiful flower, that's so amazing and beautiful to see things so close! I used an extension tube on my lens to get closer to the flower, I do not have a macro lens and these extension tubes are such a great alternative. Dive into the heart of a small world seen big...

ISO 400 - 55mm (+ macro ring) - f/5.6 - 1/5s

Where did the end of the world go?

21.DEC.2012. Misinterpretation, error or big joke? But we're all still alive and kicking right? We missed the end of the world, nothing has changed. And nothing changing might be the end of the world, who knows. Just enjoy and relax, like Fievel here on the picture, nothing to worry about...

ISO 100 - 55mm - f/5.6 - 1/50s

Warm clouds over Taurignan-Castet

And here's the bridge I was talking about in my previous post, it's crossing the river Le Salat and is bringing you a little closer to the Midi-Pyrenees mountains. It's sunset time and some parts of the sky have warm tones and atmosphere. Although the snow already covers the top of the mountains, it didn't reach the village yet.

ISO 200 - 28mm - f/4.0 - 1/500s

Taurignan-Castet

I spotted a nice place for a panorama the other day, just after crossing this river (Le Salat) but didn't have the time to notice this little beauty on our right side, an old part of the village (Taurignan-Castet) by the river. We were just passing by then (by car). Not much people there, about 160 inhabitants in a 7km² village. I wish I had an ND filter to give the water a silky effect... maybe next time.

ISO 200 - 18mm - f/3.5 - 1/400s

Rusty thing spotted

Stopping randomly for a few shots, spotting something...

ISO 400 - 200mm - f/6.3 - 1/160s

Simple things

Amazing simple things.

ISO 200 - 55mm - f/11 - 1/125s

Post-processing. An important step (to me)

To illustrate why I do think post-processing is an important step in developing your digital photographs, I will first let the images speak for themselves here...

Click on the images for larger and better view

The left image is the photo as it comes straight out of the camera after shooting the scene, as you can see there's not much information there, poor lights, tones and colors and there's a lot of black (pitch black) without any information or details.

However, by shooting in RAW format, you make the software able to recover the maximum of light, shadows and details, just see for yourself (post-processing under Adobe Lightroom).

This is a belgian landscape taken during the golden hour, thus giving you this amazing warm atmosphere... Information was not lost even though the first image is way too underexposed!

ISO 200 - 36mm - f/5.0 - 1/4000s

Can't decide? When in doubt, keep them!

As digital photographers, we have this opportunity of shooting a lot of pictures without worrying about development costs or poor quality photographs except maybe for the space on your hard drive (which can be tremendous). Should this be an advantage or not, if you shoot loads of pictures (like me) and can't really decide wether to keep a photo or not in your collection... keep it and process it on another day!

I often shoot at anything, not that I take thousands of images each time but I rarely go out, take one or two single pictures then go back to the computer for post-processing. At the end of a big day I might end-up importing hundreds of pictures into Lightroom and of course, I will not keep them all. Some (many?) of them are usually unworkable or even useless and are for sure to be deleted and forgotten (yes, sad end for them).

Lately, I've been focusing quite a lot on landscape photography but as I didn't move a lot (I stayed in the same region), I made many similar shots and couldn't decide which ones were keepers and which ones to get rid of. I usually start by getting rid of crappy shots and keeping those I'm 100% sure I want to keep. However, there are some doubts for the rest... "I already have that kind of image", "It's very similar to the other one I kept", "Hmm not sure what to do about these" and this goes on and on. This is exactly what happened here for those three images.

I kept them and I'm glad I did it. At first, I was not sure how to process them, I turned the first one into black and white which worked fine (in my opinion) as the mountains are sharp and contrasty. The second one with the birds was just not one of my favorites and after working on it, I simply liked it. And same story for the third photograph. All of these three photos were taken in South of France, close to the Pyrenees mountains. That was a nice journey...

Another day, another mood, fresh inspiration :-)

Image #1: ISO 800 - 115mm - f/5.6 - 1/640s

Image #2: ISO 800 - 63mm - f/5.0 - 1/640s

Image #3: ISO 400 - 31mm - f/11 - 1/160s

Liege (Belgium) and its beautiful bridge

This is one of the most famous and beautiful bridge in Belgium, it's located in Liege, my native city. The bridge is called "Le pont de Fragnée" in french and I took that shot from a park (le parc de la Boverie) on the water diversions. That was a gray and rainy day and this was just a few minutes before it poured with heavy rain which made it difficult for me as I was right in the middle of making a panorama... Hopefully I had the time to get ready for this shot and the next one.

The bridge was built from 1901 to 1904 for the universal exhibition of 1905 (sources: wikipedia).

The left river is "l'Ourthe" and the right river "la Meuse".

Above image: ISO 200 - 18mm - f/8.0 - 1/40s

And here's another angle/view through two of these metallic sculptures, circles. This is just to the left, before the above bridge built across the water diversions. This smaller bridge is the "pont de Fétinne" in french.
As you may have noticed, I'm standing right in the middle of two rivers.

Left image: ISO 200 - 18mm - f/8.0 - 1/25s

"Au clair de la lune".

Under the moon light, in the middle of a late belgian night (in the village of Saive). A five seconds exposure time photo. I had a hard time trying to find the correct settings on the camera and missed a few shots, I was hoping the moon to be more on the left of the frame but was satisfied with the results anyway.

Above image: ISO 200 - 154mm - f/6.3 - 5.0s

Weird reflection.

Here on the left is a similar shot to the first one (taken 3 minutes before) except that I missed the focus and the moon has been duplicated in a weird way as it has been duplicated with a different exposure and mirrored. Probably a flare effect...

Left image: ISO 200 - 200mm - f/6.3 - 3.0s

Garden game time for Humphrey

If you have visited my blog before, you probably came across one of the pictures of Humphrey, a basset hound. The puppy is still very young (about 8 months old) and is still very playful and that's why he really likes it when you spend some time playing with him. However, I couldn't help taking my camera with me, "you never know...". And I'm glad he stopped for a second, looked at me and left me the time to compose the scene...

Woof!

ISO 200 - 40mm - f/2.8 - 1/1000s (← woohoo!)

Panorama, why you should keep your focus steady

Photography is a huge (fantastic) world and a way of learning photography is also making mistakes, trials and errors. I didn't upload that panorama of Saint-Lizier before because I made a mistake by not keeping the focus the same during the whole photo shooting process but finally decided to upload it to share with you that little tip.

So, what's wrong with this panorama? Let's have a closer look at the picture...

Saint-Lizier Go Round!

I like making this! Another kind of panorama, the panorama planet at 360 degrees! Fun to do. This one has been done in the small village of Saint-Lizier again, in France, Midi-Pyrenees. You can see the cathedral, the Prince-Bishop's Palace (the big one on the right with the towers), the village itself and part of the Pyrenees mountains.

Basically, to have this small world in one single picture, I have done a 360 degrees panorama with 12 photos which I merged together with a software, made the final image a square (e.g. 3000x3000px, don't bother keeping the aspect ratio then, the picture will be highly distorted), gave it a 180° rotation and applied a Polar Coordinates distortion filter. And voilà!

I noticed one small issue though. The little green place right in the middle of the planet (where you can see the bench) is distorted/warped on the lower side. This is right where I was standing with the tripod which means that if you are too close to an object (in this case the small surrounding) wall, it will be heavily distorted and everything around (and close enough) will be like... sucked in!

Fundamentally not really an issue but I prefer the center to be clearly round

Feeling upside down? That's ok! ;-)

Any question, feel free to ask, I'll be glad to answer you!

Enjoy!

For each individual shot: ISO 400 - 18mm - f/8.0 - 1/13s

Panorama from Saint-Lizier, a wider view

Here's the panorama I was talking about in my previous post. It has been made with five (vertical) photos merged together with the help of a software. It is mainly showing a sunset, a dramatic sky and the (very) small commercial area of Saint-Lizier. Please click the image for a larger view.

Enjoy the wide view in France, Midi-Pyrenees.

For each individual shot: ISO 200 - 18mm - f/3.5 - 1/500s

The blue sky is gone

So I'm still on that nice little spot in the small village of Saint-Lizier, very nice spot where the only thing you want to do is making a super giant panorama as the view extends in front of your eyes offering you a beautiful sunset. I made that panorama which I'll upload soon. This one is just on the left of the sunset, sun is hiding behind the mountains, throwing away its golden light and with a bit of tones manipulation the blue haze turned into that amazing brownish haze...

This is one single image cropped with a 16/9 ratio which is a ratio I like for landscape photography.

Saint-Lizier, Midi-Pyrenees, France.

ISO 400 - 40mm - f/10 - 1/200s

Hiding behind the mountains

The sun is now slowly setting down, leaving you with warmer tones and astonishing colors, sometimes revealing a ray of light throughout the clouds. A call between meditation and contemplation.

Above image: ISO 400 - 35mm - f/11 - 1/125s

Bonus :) Here on the left is a zoom (just a few minutes later) on the right bright area of the sunset. The effect is pretty cool, it looks like the forest on top of the mountains is on fire.

Click the image (as all the other images) for a larger and better view.

Left image: ISO 400 - 134mm - f/8.0 - 1/80s

Sunset in Midi-Pyrenees

I went a bit lower in the village until I reached that spot, I had to hurry before the sun went down too much. And that goes faster than you may think ;-)

ISO 400 - 40mm - f/16 - 1/640s