Looking up, inside the huge cap

The huge "cap" that you see here is actually the entrance of the railway station 'Liege Guillemins' located in Liege, Belgium. And here below I'm inside, looking up at the beautiful architecture.

1st photo: ISO 100 - 18mm - f/8.0 - 1/15s
2nd photo: ISO 400 - 18mm - f/8.0 - 1/40s
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Random smile

Liege Guillemins, railway station in Liege, Belgium.

I just love it when random people see you taking their photos and then give you a smile. That's just a simple thing but that makes your photography day beautiful :D

ISO 400 - 18mm - f/8.0 - 1/40s
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"Voie 2"

Top view on Liege Guillemins train station; Liege, Belgium. I need to check that I do not bother people in a hurry next time, especially when using the tripod...

ISO 800 - 18mm - f/8.0 - 1/60s

Right on time!

What is better for travellers than a train arriving right on time! Another shot from my session in Liege Guillemins train station; Liege, Belgium.

ISO 400 - 31mm - f/8.0 - 1/30s

Out of time!

At the train station, you might be just in time to catch your train, you might as well be to early so you have time to chill out and appreciate the stunning architecture of this train station (Liege Guillemins, Belgium), or in the worst case you might be (too) late like this running guy. You'd better hurry! ;-)

Occasionally, you might be there for photographs hehe...

ISO 400 - 18mm - f/8.0 - 1/25s

Liege Guillemins Train station, a masterpiece.

The entrance of the impressive 'Liege Guillemins' train station in Liege, Belgium. This is also a station for TGV/High-speed train. A masterpiece from the spanish architect Santiago Calatrava Valls.

A place to wander, a place to stare at.

ISO 200 - 18mm - f/4.0 - 1/320s

"Lights will guide you". Liège, le pont Saint-Léonard.

First snow here this winter, I thought it would be time for a panorama picture! This is one of the numerous bridges in Liege (Belgium), this one's the St-Leonard bridge (hence the french title) also called the Maghin bridge (le pont Maghin). That's not the most beautiful bridge of the city but surely is interesting due to the lighting of it. Bridge is crossing the Meuse river.
It was freaking cold outside and it froze my feet and hands but that was definitely worth it! I took three panorama's of this bridge but this one came out the best.

I was not sure exactly at what time they would light the bridge so I went there just a tiny bit before sunset and they switched on the lights 10min after my arrival, good one! As this is the last of the three panoramas I did, the sky here is already dark and polluted by street lamps which gives quite a nice effect though. It also has this cute little blue lit pathway on the right side.
This is a long exposure photo (15 seconds).

Lights will guide you...

Panorama is made out of 5 vertical shots
For each individual shot: ISO 100 - 18mm - f/14 - 15s

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

By the Cathedral

By the Saint-Lizier Cathedral. France, Midi-Pyrénées.

ISO 800 - 40mm - f/4.5 - 1/200s

The 'Sainte-Eulalie-et-Sainte-Julie' Cathedral

In the small village of Elne, there's this impressive cathedral.
The Sainte-Eulalie-et-Sainte-Julie Cathedral; France, Pyrénées-Orientales.

Saint-Lizier, its cathedral. France (Midi-Pyrénées).

It's a beautiful warm day of Autumn in the South of France today, there is no need for a chunky sweater and that's a good thing I like. The building you see on the right side of this image is the top of the cathedral of Saint-Lizier seen from the court of the Palace of the Prince-Bishop. Mmm... lovely.

Home or gift shop?

So, home or gift shop? Both...

Yep, that's right, carefully look at the hanging sign on the right, it says "öppet" (open). The (gift) shopkeepers are living right there and their little store is... right there too, definitively a cute shop selling souvenirs for tourists and nice handmade stuff. Living and working in the same place, how cool is this (?). And the house is, let's say, quite cute and beautiful. We are here in Sweden, on one of these little islands along the south west coast.

Sweden, not your typical house architecture

One of the things that you want to bring back home when you visit Sweden... their homes! We all agreed on that during that trip but unfortunately... the car trunk was too small, hehe. The Swedes seem to appreciate wood more than any other raw material, lovely.

A not so abandoned chapel

Something totally different from my usual work but that was worth the effort... A digital manipulation of one of my picture. Here, a chapel of Herstal, a city in Liege, Belgium.
The Saint-Lambert chapel (also known as Saint-Oremus chapel) is a cute one, it's been listed in 1965 but the background and things around it didn't make it a super duper nice photo (well, in my opinion) so I decided to keep it anyway and manipulate it digitally. Gosh, this takes hours to manipulate a picture like this, I'm not sure I will do this again hehe. Or maybe I will...

Credits for the external elements integrated into the scenery to the following artists:

» Shoofly-Stock: the bench · the trees · the crows · the owl · the birds nest · the flowers · the zombies.
» wyldraven: the big moon
» wachowicz: the small moon
» PartWish: the main stormy sky

These are links to their deviantArt profiles and will open in a new window. Big thanks to them for sharing and distributing their stock images and -in specific cases- for the permission to publish the image outside deviantArt.

- You are not authorized to share, copy, distribute this image (titled 'A not so abandoned chapel') without attribution to the original artists listed in this post or link to this post. -

Charles Vögele store front

Night time is no time for shopping right? But at night, places are deserted, no cars, no people, no birds, no dogs, no nothing, it's a no-man's land except you, your camera, your tripod. You're all set up, you're ready for the bright store front night photography. This is a 40sec long exposure shot.

Just for the piece of information, Charles Vögele is a Swiss group, leader on the Swiss market in textile distribution.

The arduous labour of our Veterans

Blegny-mine site in Blegny, Belgium.
The pickaxe is particularly symbolic in the area... A lot of people worked hard in this mine 'till 1980 to bring raw material and wealth to the country, make a living and feed the family.

It took me a few trials before getting an interesting angle to see both the main structure of the site and the pickaxe on the same picture, symbolically planted in this rock. Quite a good result in my opinion...