One minute for the sea

Recifs in the Mediterranean sea at Le Pradet - Provence

Another long exposure in full daylight.
Don't miss the large view.

Some rocks on the beach (second version)

Mediterranean coast at Le Pradet - Provence

I don't do that very often but after processing the image in my previous post i wanted to try a softer version. After obtaining the new one i was about to delete the first one but decided to keep them both.

Some rocks on the beach

Mediterranean seascape at Le Pradet - Provence

No HDR, no DRI, just one shot lightly processed.

Classic HDR scenery

Cloudy morning on the Mediterranean sea
Le Pradet - Provence

Calm at dawn

Calm at dawn - Le Pradet - Provence

Peaceful mediterranean seascape in Provence.

Colors and shapes

Rocks in the Mediterranean sea

Long exposure in full day light.

Morning contrasts

don't miss the large view

Wake up : 3 am.
Look threw the window : Clear and starry night with beautiful moon.
Coffee and drive to the sea.
Arrival on the place : 4 am. Still dark with big clouds ...
That's the third time i try to catch one soft dawn on the sea at this place. That's the third time i arrive there under the clouds.

Back home : 8 am under a small rain.

I'll have to come back another time.

When the gray sky makes the sea gray

Récif in the Mediterraneans sea large view

Long exposure by a gray morning at Le Pradet - Provence.

Long exposure in full daylight with the Hoya ND 400 filter

Full Mediterranean colors large view

The Hoya ND 400 filter is a ND (neutral density) filter which reduces the light entering the lens by 9 f stops. That means that exposure time is multiplied by 512. In other words if your shutter speed without any filter was 1/30s, with the filter the shutter speed will be around 17s.

As you could notice, for this springtime i do many seascapes, mostly with long exposures. Without any filters, such exposure times are only possible some few moments at dawn and dusk time. The ND 400 is a good tool to increase the time available for long exposures and such shots with scenes a little more lightned can be beautiful and unusual.
Of course, with or without filter, shooting scapes at noon won't give stunning images but a strong ND filter can open some creative doors to capture beautiful lights with an unusual style.

Last point : The ND 400 is a very dark piece of glass (i could say black) and when it's on the lens you don't see anything in the viewfinder. So it's not for point and shot photography. You have to set up the tripod and the camera, frame without filter, lock everything on the tripod, install the filter, shoot, remove the filter and so on.

Bold HDR colors

Le Pradet - Provence large view

HDR photography of course helps with saving highlights and shadows but it also increase greatly the colors informations in the image file. So the photographer can go very far in post processing without altering image quality. Som can think that highly processesed images don't go with quality. That's another and eternal story. You can like it or not. These days i like it.

HDR from 3 exposures, raw process with SilkyPix, HDR and tone mapping with Photomatix and ultimate post processing with Picture Window Pro.

Purple dusk

Dusk light on the Mediterranean sea large view

This day, the light was not so good and i stayed very late on the place. I was just about to leave when i saw these colors. A few minutes later they have disapeared.

Mediterranean sky

Mediterranean seascape in Le Pradet - Provence
I've to return there at dawn !

Nikon D200 and Sigma 10-20 : manual DRI from 3 exposures.

Playing with photomatix and tone mapping

Dusk jewels on the Mediterranean coastDuring some years i've used the HDR imaging for my corporate work, trying to produce some natural looking images. After, when i started with HDR on my landscapes, i've also tried to increase the dynamic range i could catch without giving some too spectacular effects to the pictures.
Today i sometimes like to push the tone mapping's sliders in Photomatix ...

Large view here or click on the image above :)

Dusk lights and shadows

An other Mediterranean seascape in my new place near Le Pradet.
The large view looks really better.

Tips for zoomify on blogspot

Powered by Zoomify

You can also have a look at a larger version of this image.
One of my old posts recently received some commments asking for help about Zoomify implementation on blogspot so i decided to post some tips here.

Files hosting : You need a web host for the zoomify viewer and for you image file folders. Don't try to upload them directly on blogspot, you can't do that.
On this web host, create one folder to receive the zoomifyViewer.swf file. Then, create one subfolder of this folder to receive the content of the tiles folder and the ImageProperties.xml file created by zoomify.
For the next part, we'll assume that :

• Your web host URL is :
  http://mywebhost.com
• The URL of the folder receiving the swf file is :
  http://mywebhost.com/zoom/
• The URL of the folder receiving the files generated by zoomify is :
  http://mywebhost.com/zoom/image/

Code editing : Zoomify gives a Template.html file. You need to edit its content in the following way.

• Replace the width and height values with the values you want.
• Replace the URLs of the swf file and of the image folder with the above values.

When done, save the html file on your local machine, open it with your browser. If you have all done correctly you should have a blank page showing your image in the zoomify viewer.
If it's OK, edit again the Template.html file, remove the first 3 lines and the last 3 (html, body, div tags). Remove also the blank lines.
Blogspot doesn't like the newlines into the html tables codes. So delete them all until you have all the code on one unique line. Connect to your blogspot account, post one new message, go to the Edit HTML code tab and copy the big code line int the text area. Check the preview and it should be right :)

Digital darkroom power

I'm shooting digital since the end of the 90'ies but i'm still amazed by the power of the digital darkroom.
I'm writting this post in front of two fresh prints of the images posted here. Nobody could tell how much these photos were processed. They both come from the same raw files and just differ by the post processing.

A little more :
At the begining were 5 exposures from the same frame with one EV increment between each. I converted them to 5 tif files and then blended theses new images using several masks to obtain the photo shown on the top of this article.
The bottom photo is just a variation of the above one.
I've re-processed the first resulting image to obtain 3 new tifs simulating 3 exposures (still 1 EV increment). Once more i used masks (geometric, brush, tones) to blend these 3 new tifs into a new one to which i finally applied some little tones and colors tweaks ...

Of course, the first image looks very more natural than the second one but i'm not sure about the one i'll hang on my wall...

One new place

Wild and peaceful
My regular readers know that i try to make natural landscapes. I try to feature the nature, without people, without man made things.
I don't know excactly why. Here are some possible reasons :

• I've always loved natural landscapes and the most wild they are, the most i love them.
• When i sell prints or licence an image, i don't have to deal with a model release.
• Such landscapes often involve a little hike.

During the past months, i've spent hours and hours shooting seascapes at "Le Bau Rouge" near Carqueiranne. I love this place for a long time but it's very small and for some weeks i was feeling the need to change. So, i asked some friends, looked at the map, and found one new spot. From there, i can see the other face of the "Bau Rouge"'s cliff. The access is easy but the beach (kind of) is not really flat... I think that's why i've never seen anybody bathing there. I also think it's possible to walk on these rocks during hours.
So i think it will be my new spot and i hope to show you soon many other photos.