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. 


As I experienced technical glitches with my camera, I used my wife's Fuji HS28EXR, one level above mine, but sharing most specs. Not having raw file support in this model, I shot everything as JPEG, swapping between manual and automatic modes, depending on the amount of time I had. 

Also, permanently installed UV filter, sometimes adding my CPL, resulting usually in those contrasted bluer sky shots. 

I had a tremendous opportunity to shoot 2 insects I'd been trying for several years and never managing : dragonflies, and the Hawkmoth. I'd barely ran into the former, and as for the latter, these particular moths never seem to take a pause and fly so fast, that I found them one of the biggest challenges as a photographer. 

During this trip, I got some really nice shots of both, and for that I was quite happy. You'll see them in the second part of this photo diary, but before that, I offer these shots of the village itself. 

I don't often photograph people, so I went outside of my comfort zone with this first shot, that I had to crop to show only one of the children who were playing in the river - until I learn a proper editing technique to hide or better use the rest of the shot. 

Here's an selection of photos, showing the river and village, including its city-hall ("mairie" in French). 

More to come in subsequent parts.