Nov 3rd 2017 - Photoshoot in a cemetery (1)

Last Friday, we went back to visit the Carmes cemetery where for photo shoots, partially the cemetery, but mostly of my wife. I'm still learning certain editing skills, so for now I'll offer some of the pics that I already treated and continue the series in other posts.

Halloween TB photoshoots - Spooky Wife edition

I didn't use to celebrate Halloween (or any other cultural celebration for that matter, but that's a topic outside of this blog's goals).

What I can say, however, is that my wife brought her favorite cultural celebrations, one of them being Halloween. Some of ours years together, we dress up and play spooky, creepy roles and take photo shoots from which I displayed my own creepy self here.

Trigger warning : Cobwebs

If you suffer extreme arachnophobia, you may not wish to see cobwebs. This is probably only a mild trigger warning to most of you, but I thought it best to warn of this content.

Halloween TB photoshoots - Decorations 1

I continue this Halloween throwback series with a few decorations, and as I hope to get better and more recent ones to offer in a few days, I title the entry accordingly. 

Halloween TB photoshoot - cemetery edition

It's Halloween season, and with it, people of all ages celebrate Life by treat or treating, getting dressed-up/ disguised, and visit cemeteries where their family members have been buried. 

For me, cemeteries are places to visit for architectural beauties as well as decrepit, shabby tombs have fallen pray to the damage of time - or occasionally to vandalism. 

Halloween TB photoshoots - CreeperMe

It's still Halloween season, and for this, I'd like to continue with a series of creepy photos, taken usually in previous years' Halloweens, but not always.

Color Mood : Whites (2)

This is the second part of the color mood : whites, started a couple days ago.

You'll see statues, nature (butterfly, flowers), and snowy landscapes.

Trigger warning: spiders!!! (Part 2)

Trigger Warning :  If you suffer from a severe enough arachnophobia that you cannot look at photos, you shouldn't click on the read more button hereafter, as I separated all my phots of them so they don't appear among other photos in my various posts, and thus offer a post to showcase for those who are okay.

Color Mood : Whites (1)

My wife suggested gathering photos of objects with the predominant color white and post an entry as if it were a mood board, so here I am, with a photo album with this color as the main focus in all objects.

I took some of these shots while travelling, either for my past work or for leisure ; I also propose white flowers, landscapes with snow, architecture and statues - the latter are a bit off-white, or almost cream, hence the more generic name of "whites", including variants that are close enough to pass.

Flowers (1)

You may have noticed, I love to take nature photos! You saw butterflies, birds, and now I start a new series, dedicated to flowers! 

Even when I didn't have my macro attachement, most cameras allow macro mode to shoot these subjects. My current camera allows me to get as close as 1 CM in super-macro mode, whilst macro mode allows 10CM, which was the same for my previous camera. 

Into the world of butterflies

Probably my favorite subject in photography, are butterflies (alongside moths). They are beautiful, colorful, not too small to always need my macro attachment on the ready (though it can help a lot), butterfly seasons are my favorite. 

I say seasons, because where I live, butterflies have 2 or 3 generations : in spring, summer and autumn. In all my winters, I've seen butterflies very rarely, and only due to global warming which gave us a few very mild, and quite warm winters. 

My (poor photographer's) Editing tools

In my first years as a photographer, I didn't edit any photo. In my desire to show the real views I had through a documentary styled photography, I thought it was an unnecessary process which would alter my results and thus create a lie. 

However, my wife pointed out that all photographers do it and that my photos usually had an unsophisticated look to them, so after further research, I decided to compromise and started editing, but not too much, to preserve a documentary aspect while also rendering my photos more interesting to look at. 

Tb photoshoot : Birds 1

As promised, I want to share with you some of my good bird photos. It's not always easy to get close enough to have them in fullest possible screen, so I have to zoom and then in post-production, edit levels, contrast, saturation, brightness, and crop the image to focus as much as I can on my bird subjects. 

On my love for bird watching and photography

As an introvert child, I preferred to withdraw from games with class mates during playtime, and, without permission, would leave school premises. I discovered that I loved observing birds, so one day after winning a scratch lottery ticket, I bought binoculars so I could watch them from farther away. 

My tools & techniques for macros

My tools for macrophotography are :

• Evident, the camera, and a UV filter that I set on it permanently - it doesn't do anything about the macro, though. 
• When I can, also my Raynox DCR-150 macro attachment lens, which offers 1.5 magnification, 
• and when in shape, I also take my tripod, the Vanguard Alta Pro 263AT, to which I added the SBH100 ball-head. Read about them at the bottom quarter or so of this entry.
• If I cannot or forgot to take with me the attachement, I use either macro or super-macro modes in my camera. The first is for any object 10-300cm away, whilst the latter allows coming close as 1cm, without being as detailed as the attachement's magnification 

Trigger warning: spiders!!! (Part 1)

Trigger Warning :  If you suffer from a severe enough arachnophobia that you cannot look at photos, you shouldn't click on the read more button hereafter, as I separated all my phots of them so they don't appear among other photos in my various posts, and thus offer a post to showcase for those who are okay.

(external) Beginner photographer links (1)

Instead of boring you with technical details you may or may not know, and to avoid plagiarizing or using the wrong jargon, I'll share with you a series of videos explaining some photography basics, which will be useful if you ever wish to learn.

Gear - Mono/Tri-pods

There are many situations in which a photographer may need to add to the camera's image stabilization and require either a mono-pod, or even a tripod. 

TB photo diary : Lavaudieu Part 2

The first part of Lavaudieu's photo diary concentrated on the village itself, and now I present natural Lavaudieu for this second part, concentrating on nature : flowers and insects were quite present, and I had the amazing chance to photograph both dragonflies and a hawk-moth, which had been so difficult to see and shoot as they are so fast and tend to be far away from my lenses. 

In this album, you'll see fishes from the river, a bee and a butterfly sharing lavender flowers, and a flock of finches sharing a tree with swallows. 
I tweaked only levels, contrasts, and color balances (adding or deleting lightness and/or saturation). 

I totally de-saturated one of the fish photos.


Enjoy ! 

TB photo diary : Lavaudieu Part 1

In late August 2016, a friend drove his sister and us to beautiful Auvergne villages, the first of which is called Lavaudieu. 

It was a very sunny day, but lovely to spend the day photographing the village, with its quaint houses, showing moss isolation on their outer walls, as well as natural subjects with the local  Senoui river passing through it and many flowers. 

Gear- batteries

I had initially intended to discuss batteries in the same posts as chargers, but as it lengthened over a few days' composing, I decided to separate but post them at the same time.

I already mentioned I chose rechargeable nimh batteries instead of li-ion ones, for ecological, budgetary and availability reasons, and detailed as much as I could my 2 current chargers, with an emphasis on a maha c-9000 which I use far more frequently.

Gear - Chargers

While searching for a candidate camera, most models in my budget had Li-ion batteries, with small autonomies and short shelf-life, in a consumerist mindset. I learned that these batteries allowed fewer photos than their DSLR counterparts, and far fewer than AA Nimh batteries.

Most importantly, these lithium based batteries are far more damaging to the environment and they get thrown away faster (overall) than nickel-cadmium hybrid (=Nimh) batteries. 

photo TB : a trip to a park (2015-06-15)

As I'm still working on editing more recent photos for which I need to learn certain techniques, I decided to share a TB (= throwback) photo session I had in a park, a bit over 2 years ago.

The conditions were very tough : the sky was overcast, and it was quite windy. Being too cold doesn't help me take the best photos, so I hope to go back on one of the last warm days of this summer that is drawing shorter, but for now, here are those pics from mid-June 2015.
I edited levels, contrast, and reduced size to fit this blog's limitations by cropping - which seems to also reduce the overall resolution. 

Gear - my past and present cameras

My first camera wasn’t an actual camera, but a webcam that I could detach and use for photography. It’s definition was a mere 2 MP. This webcam was quite small, as you can see.  My photos were quite blurry and with a lot of noise, even in broad daylight. 

I used it for quite a while, but only sporadically. I disliked its limitations, even though I was only a total noob. I felt I needed more than a point-and-shoot-a-blurred-photo camera, and didn’t keep much of the resulting shots once I upgraded. 

Here are its specs. 

Photos - the moon series

I thought to start my first photo show-casing with the moon, for several reasons.

The first of them is that the moon has always fascinated me, and I find it beautiful. Even though we always see the same side (its rotational period is identical to its orbital period, so the same portion of it always faces our planet),  atmospheric conditions can alter what we see.

The second reason ties-in at this point, because our gear and knowledge both can equally affect what photo we may take, and thus what we see can be greatly different.

On gear & editing

I’v heard many times that photography gear isn’t the most important aspect of a photographer’s expression, but I have to somewhat disagree. One can have lots of artistic yearnings, a great eye and talent, but if the camera is too basic, all the results would normally be quite basic. That isn’t to say that nothing can be used, but we do have limitations inherent to any particular model’s specs. 

My photographer story

My earliest contact with photography in my youth has been through a grand-father who was quite gifted, but also obsessive with his wishes for a perfect photo. It was before the advent of digital photography, so he used all those “archaic” tools to measure light, distances, exposures etc, and since he was so meticulous, the process was rather endless. 

Welcome, and about the blog

Welcome to my 7th blog, readers. I have so many interests and topics, that I created separate blogs for each. This one will be about my photography, and more rarely, art, as I've dabbled in sketches, paintings and a few clay sculptures. 

I shall post photos, when I can, and discuss also my gear and general views of editing, my choices in cameras, tripods and other gear along the way.

I like to share the knowledge and techniques that I've learned over the years, but I'm by no means a pro. Only a somewhat advanced amateur who loves this hobby. 

I don't plan any particular day for posting, as my outings vary, and I have many photos to sort and choose from, but if I can, after a few initial quick posts to grow this blog in its infancy, I shall space my posts farther apart as time passes. 

Also, I will mark TW (= Trigger Warning) on all photos depicting spiders, as I know a lot of people fear them and whose arachnophobia can be triggered even by seing an image, and I don't wish to cause any form of pain. I know that some of my readers and viewers will belong to our mutual mental health community, and there are amongst them/you some that I know suffer from this phobia. Rest assured, therefore, these posts will always be marked, and totally separated.  

If you wish, you can comment, but know that I moderate before publishing, and request respectful exchanges on this space, as a common and mutual courtesy.