Saint Isidore church at night - HDR

Saint Isidore church

I often pass in front of this place by night, yesterday i had my camera with me and stopped.

HDR from 5 exposures, done with SilkyPix and Photomatix as usual.

The chapel in the forest - HDR

Malière chapel - Provence

I've ever posted a very similar image and some words about this place here.

As you can devine, this one was done the same day but from 3 exposures processed with Photomatix. I love the rendition of the stone walls given by the tonemapping process.

Salagon - A panoramic view

Same place and same day than the one in the previous post but early in the morning with a really more classical light.
Done by stitching 15 images taken with a long lens to obtain a very detailed result.
The image under is a detail of the walls. If you're interested, you can click to see this detail at 100%.

Dusk light on Salagon

Dusk light on Salagon - Alpes de Haute Provence

The Prieuré de Salagon is an antique spiritual place transformed in an ethnological and botanical museum. It's garden are beautiful, full of mediterranean plants and some other ones from many places in the world.

The chapel in the forest

Malière chapel - Provence

This chapel is in a narrow valley really close to my village. So close that i've never photographied it before :) Perharps also because the valley is so narrow that good light is rare.
The chapel is a little mysterious. Every body call it a chapel but nobody knows if it's really one or a mausolée. It's a private place, can't be approached very close and nobody seems to know who is the real owner ...

Most often i just use my long lenses for some helicopter shots and i don't carry them for my usual landscape work.
This chapel gave me an occasion to change my habitudes and to retrive the pleasure to use such a lens on a tripod.

Notre Dame des Anges - 2 HDR outside views

By a rainy day ...

Notre Dame des Anges, a curious church in Provence - HDR

Notre Dame des Anges

Notre Dames des Anges is right on the top of the highest mountain around my village. This place is dedicated to a saint who had the power to cure people diseases. The walls are covered with gifts that peoples offered to say thank you or ask for a cure. Not only the walls, some special and bigger gifts also hang on the ceiling. When i did this shot, over my head were a little boat and ... a dead crocodile.

Click on the picture above to see it at a better size or click here if you want to visit the big file with zoomify.

If you often come here, you may know that i like and follow the work of Michelle Basic Hendry an canadian painter. Twitter just told me she had terminated a church painting and wrote about it. If you're right brained, you can beleive that ideas cross the oceans :)

Dusk time in the forest

Dusk time at the Chartreuse de la Verne

I've spent many time shooting during these last three days. That's a photo from yesterday in the late evening. The long exposure (125 seconds) really helps to retrieve some colors in the scene under a really low light. Of course such an long exposure can't give very sharp leaves in the forest but today i don't think that's really a problem. Some years ago i would probably not have done this shot. I was working in a photo agency and we were reviewing slides from photographers on a light table with a strong magnifying glass. This one OK, this one no ... I guess we wouldn't have accepted any forest shot if we couldn't count the leaves on the trees :)

Today i spent most of the day shooting paintings for a painter and after that i rapidly went to the beach for some seascapes at dusk time. Shooting paintings is an usual part of my job and i have to say that it's a real pleasure. It gives inspiration and it's always a good lesson about composition and colors.
A painter i often work with became a friend and 5 years ago for the birth of my daughter she offered her a large beautiful painting and told us Put it where she can see it, touch it, play with it. That's done whith Liquitex acrylic and it can't be damaged by a child. Five years after i can say that it's true and Liquitex on canvas can resist to many things :)

In the house of God - HDR

Notre Dames des Victoires, Collobrières

Nikon D200 + sigma 10-20, HDR from 8 exposures done with Photomatix.

Other church, other dream

Notre Dame des Victoires - Collobrières

Nikon D200 + Sigma 10-20. Hdr from 9 exp. Nef files processed with SilkyPix. Hdr work with Photomatix.

Dreaming in the church

Notre Dame de Pitié

Today i had to go to the post office to send some prints to one client. Coming back i saw that this little chapel was opened and had the idea of this image. As it's less than 100 m from my house it just took a few minutes before i was there with my camera.

Tech : Nikon D200 + Sigma 10-20, hdr from 4 exposures, most of the work done with Photomatix.

Dont miss the large view :)

Winter dusk over the Chartreuse de la Verne

Winter dusk over the Chartreuse de la Verne
Yesterday, i spent some time hiking in the forest around this place looking for streams and waterfalls. I took this image just before the night when i was on the way back.

This monastery was build for the first time in 1174 if i remember well. It's in the middle of a deep and wild forest. Today some nuns are still living there.

The old church

The old church of Collobrières

For some shots i don't always need to wake up at 3 am, to hike in the rocks etc.
This one was done at the end of an april afternoon threw my bathroom window :)

I'm not a big fan of this kind of postcards but i found the light beautiful and i post it here now to show something else that the seascapes i do from months.

PTGui Pro : first impressions

For now more than one month i stitch all my panoramic photos with PTGui Pro.
The software is still in beta state and versions are updated very often so i won't write here a real full review but just give my firsts impressions.

About normal (not HDR) images :

• The control points generator seems to be more accurate.
• Blending is very good in most of the cases but sometimes using smartblend as a plugin can improve the result.
• Speed and memory management are very nice. I could stitch some huge panos on an old HP Vectra with Pentium III and 384 MB of RAM.
• I've noticed a little bug with Vertical lines control points but it's not a real issue and i think it will be corrected in a future update.

The HDR side :

As told in a previous post, i'm not a HDR fan. But HDR management beeing one of the biggest improvement of PTGui Pro, i've tested it with some landscapes in difficult light conditions.
So here is what i can say :

• PTGui makes a very good work to identify and align the different exposures of the same shot.
• I've noticed some kinds of dark halos in some parts of the resulting HDR files. This problem does'nt show when i combine the same source files in Photomatix Pro. In the PTGui versions history i read they fixed this bug but i didn't verify.
• The Tone Mapping tool is too basic in my mind and the preview is too small. I find very hard to obtain results having a natural look.

Conclusion :

For me PTGui Pro was the natural update for PTGui to compete with AutoPano Pro and every panoramic photographer will enjoy its simple interface and the quality of the resulting files. For me there is no doubt that the HDR functions will be improved in the future updates.