Windmills beyond the golden field

With those modern "windmills", I was only missing Don Quichotte/Quixote...
Little walk along the fields in Fumal, Belgium.

ISO 800 - 31mm - f/4.5 - 1/4000s (I probably forgot to lower the ISO value...)

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Frozen lake - Le lac de Warfaaz (II)

Seeing the lake almost totally frozen was just stunning. Here's another view of the Warfaaz lake in Spa, Belgium. I did a couple of shots there and this is probably the last one of the serie during the winter. I'm looking forward for Spring to be there so I can get colourful shots...

I used my "pancake" 40mm lens from Canon for this little sequence.
ISO 100 - 40mm - f/2.8 - 1/250s

Frozen lake - Le lac de Warfaaz (Panorama)

Still at the Warfaaz lake in Spa, Belgium. I like panorama's when I have wide open spaces in front of me. This lets you appreciate more of the scenery with all the ducks and that frozen water. Just an advise though, stay on the plain ground, you won't bear the low temperature water as ducks do ;-)

Panorama is made out of two horizontal shots.

For each shot: ISO 100 - 40mm - f/2.8 - 1/125s

Frozen lake - Le lac de Warfaaz

So yeah, in less than a month now it'll be Spring time, and just as last year we're (finally?) having the snow very late in winter. I can't tell you how strong the temptation was to walk on that pure white surface, on the frozen lake of Warfaaz in Spa, Belgium. Of course I've been careful and stayed on the edge of the lake, making sure I was stepping on plain ground! The lake is artificial and has been dug about a century ago to avoid flooding of Spa, a thermal city of Belgium, during storms and heavy rains.

(Sources: www.lacdewarfaaz.be)

ISO 100 - 40mm - f/2.8 - 1/250s

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

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

"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

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...

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

A starry sky & the sunset

Being on a nice spot...

You could see the constellations.
Well, if I knew them...

Even though my camera was attached to a tripod (it's a long exposure time shot), I didn't get the sharpness I was expecting. I did start the shutter remotely to avoid "micro-shaking"of the camera. Maybe the wind (which was not very strong)...

ISO 400 - 18mm - f/5.6 - 55.0s

The old hunter and his dog

- "I was a hunter you know. Yes yes I still have my guns. Yes yes over there, I was hunting the wild boar... but that was the good old time."

Saint-Lizier, Midi-Pyrenees, France; the old hunter and his dog.

ISO 200 - 18mm - f/3.5 - 1/640s

Fluffy above the mountains

Fluffy dark clouds dancing in the sky above the mountains. Another beautiful fall season sunset in Midi-Pyrenees, France.

This is actually a small panorama, I used only two photographs to make this one, both in landscape orientation on top of each others.

For each individual shot: ISO 1600 - 63mm - f/5.0 - 1/125s

Any zombie there?

6.08pm. Driving on the national road from the airport of Carcassonne to Saint-Lizier. It's probably too early yet to see any zombie arising from the darkness. Uff! I'm safe...

France, Midi-Pyrénées.

A fall season sunset

Beautiful sunset in France, Midi-Pyrénées. A particular atmosphere in the heart of the fall season.

Lower and upper town, the two faces of Elne

 

Elne is a small village located in France, Pyrénées-Orientales, close to Perpignan (12km) and even closer to the Mediterranean Sea (5km). The left image shows the lower town, the "modern" one while the right image shows the upper town in the historical heart of the village. The upper town is of course the one where you enjoy a little walk...

A room with view on the mountains

Landscape scenery from the South of France, somewhere on the road between the villages of Lasserre and Saint-Lizier in Midi-Pyrénées, moments before the evening.