Just like a postcard

La Baume - Sisteron- Alpes de Haute Provence

Sisteron is one of the main cities in the Alpes de Haute Provence.
It was on my way on Sunday evening while i while driving back home.
The houses you can see on the image are not in the city (which is in my back). This little village is named La Baume and i don't know if it's a real village or one part of Sisteron.

Sisteron is known for it's old, big and beautiful citadel.
Unfortunately it was not the right hour for making photos of this famous monument.
I could have wait some hours for a night shot but i was still far from home and started to be tired. So you will have to wait that i can return there at a early morning :)

If you're interested in litterature, Jean Giono a famous french writer described this region in many of his books.

Just back

Forest path in Provence Alps

At the end of the past week, my wife had to go to the Provence Alps and we decided that i would also go with my daughter.
The place where we had to go was lost in the mountains and we spent four days in our van at the top of this little path. Although i was not there for work, i took a few forest images and also some rural landscapes.
I went back during this night and have just processed this first file. You'll see the other ones during the weeks to come.

Another HDR seascape at Bau Rouge beach

HDR seascape at Bau Rouge beach, Provence

Just a very short post to say that i have to move to the northest place of Provence during a few days and so i'll be offline until next week.

Big sky over the sea, other versions should come

Big sky over the Mediterranean sea

One image from monday evening.

The sky is an HDR work from 4 exposures, softly tonemapped and the ground and sea is from one of these four exposures.

I also have another one done with a HOYA ND 400 filter giving a really other look to the sky (and of course to the sea). I'll try to post it in the next days.

Little Africa sold for a book project

Little Africa in Provence

I report this sale here because i've told many times in my comments that i rarely work with the tourism industry.

That's a strange thing : France is one of the most visited country in the world. Provence is probably the second destination for tourists visiting France and tourism is certainly the first source of income in the region where i live.
But when it comes to buy a photo, tourism offices are always short of money so they are not the best clients for photographers.
At least i don't have to shoot crowdy sand beaches under the sun :)

That said, the image above was not sold to a tourism office but to an editor making a tourism book about extraordinary landscapes in France.
The price for this kind of usage is always really low but that's an old image and the editor also works with one of the biggest travel magazine.

The myth of the untouched photo

Green splash

I often read about untouched photos just like if it was an important thing and also just like if manipulated images were borned with digital photography.
I just wonder what it can mean in writer's mind and how they can beleive that such images exist. If they refer to images done in camera only by focusing and computing exposure they are false. If they think that an untouched photo reflects real colors and tones they are still false.

In the film era, you could change the reality just by film choice and no film can render a scene exactly as it is. Excepted perharps a gray card but that's not the kind of photos i'm the most interested in.
Buy a roll of Velvia 50 film, shoot a landscape at the end of afternoon, process the film with neutral parameters and look at the result. Who can say the slide shows real colors and tones ?
Let stay a little bit with film. There are many ways to change the reality just when processing the film in the wet darkroom. More, some people were real experts to remove some annoying details on prints and even directly on the negs. They could not only remove but also add ...

With digital photography, the less we can say is what you see is not what you get.

What do you get : raw datas captured by the sensor. If you shoot jpeg you never see them. If you shoot raw you will probably never look at them because an unprocessed raw file is not really beautiful.

What do you see : an image file produced by software processing from the raw datas. The software is the camera firmware if you shoot jpeg or your raw converter if you shoot raw. If you shoot jpeg you influence the processing by changing some camera's parameters like contrast, saturation, etc. When you shoot raw you do that when you process the raw file.

And what's the importance of real colors ? Two people in front of the same scene probably wont see the same colors. I really think that it's more important to obtain a pleasant result than to try to show the exact reality.

If you look at this old post you can read that colors in the image are unprocessed. It just means that i didn't change anything to the default colors parameters of my raw converter but the most important thing about this image is that it's not a real scene. If you were there with me, never your eyes would have seen such colors. It's just a fake due to the long exposure time combined with dusk light. A fake but a natural photographic and atmospheric effect.

So, how do i make my landscapes ?

With my camera :
- I compose the scene. If i see a plastic bag on the beach i remove it. It's easier and faster than removing it with the clone tool of a photo editor but it's still a trick.
- I use all the tools i know to obtain a sharp result : tripod, remote controler, mirror lockup, etc.
- I compute the exposure not to obtain a definitive image but to capture all the dynamic range of the scene and to optimize the signal/noise ratio.
If the dynamic range is too large, i use GND filters or capture many exposures.

In the digital darkroom : I mostly play with tones curves and saturation and i also use masks to apply these tools with different settings on different parts of the image.

Of course, using photoshop to give longer legs to a model is not the same trick that enhancing colors and for me such a manipulated photo is more a digital image than a digital photograph ...

A narrow street in Collobrières - HDR

Traverse Montesquieu - Collobrières - Provence

This is an old street of my village, near the Place Rouget de l'Islse.

Some english friends live in the houses on the left so we come there very often but i had never done an image here before :)
I was walking there yesterday morning with my daughter when i had the idea of this HDR shot. So after the walk i came back with a camera and a tripod.

HDR at the river and the first sales of the Ghost Forest

Malière river - Provence

This photo was done the same day and is very similar to the one posted here some weeks ago. Today (it can change) i prefer this new one with almost no sky and giving so a more underwood impression.

I was very happy 2 days ago because i sold the first two prints of my recent Ghost forest image.

Usually when i work for a garden or pool maker i don't meet the villa owner. It happens only from time to time.
One interested in photography wanted to see me on tuesday. I went with my favorite kind of portfolio : a large box full of 18x12 (45x30 cm more precisely) prints. The man took 2 seascapes, ordered a 36x24 print of the Ghost Forest for his house in London and also took the 18x12 print of the same image to hang here in Saint-Tropez. Nice day :)

Morning light at Bau Rouge beach and 5 sites to discover

Morning light at Bau Rouge beach

Regular readers will easily recognize the vertical version of an image posted here a few weeks ago.

The five sites to discover :

http://www.chasejarvis.com
Chase Jarvis is a famous and creative photographer. You will discover some stunning various images in his galleries. His blog where he shares thoughts and links is also very interesting.

http://www.roentarre.com James wey often comments here. His galleries are full of very beautiful images and he runs an original blog where he posts serious articles about some technical aspects of the photography. I don't know an other place to read about this subjects.

http://www.antoninkratochvil.com/ Impressive black and white photography. Between many photographic awards, Antonin Kratochvil won the World Press in 2003.

http://www.magichourtravelscapes.com/ The site of Kah Kit Yoong and Winnie Ho. I'll make short about it or it will never end. It's my favorite kind of photography and the 2 authors are some masters.

http://www.gulker.com I discovered the blog of Chris Gulker some months ago while looking at my blog's referrers. That's not really a photography blog although the author is a very serious photographer. It's just a blog from a long time blogger who daily shares various thoughts and pieces of life. I really like it.

HDR in the Douglas forest

Douglas pine tree forest in Provence

The Douglas pine tree aka Oregon pine tree is really not a Provence tree but some people had the idea to grow some of them here.
On may 1rst, i crossed this little forest while i was walking through the hills around my village. It's a very dark place, the light is so low that nothing grows on the ground and only the top branches have needles.

I took the 6 exposures used for this image mostly to see how HDR could be worthwile in such conditions. After processing i was about to delete the files as i often do, when i thought i could post it here to show another aspect of the nature we have here.

Note : If you're interested in HDR landscapes, you can have a look at my tips here.

Cards are now available in my Imageking gallery

Sunflowers field before the storm

I've recently activated the greeting cards option on all the images in my Imagekind gallery.
I've waited about one year to do that because i wasn't understanding the automatic card's layout and wanted to be sure that my photos wouldn't be cropped.
After some site updates and some deeper help readings i saw how it works (very simple) and checked the option's box.

Once more, Imagekind made the things nicely customizable.
When you buy a card, you can decide of the image orientation and choose between three papers.
The image is printed on the front, the inside is blank and on the back there is a thumbnail of the image and the URL of my gallery.

One more dusk at Bau Rouge beach

Mediterranean dusk at Bau Rouge beach

It was about one week ago. I was at home and in the end on afternoon i noticed the clouds in the sky and thought they could give some interesting lights at the sea.

I drove to the beach and arrived at dusk. I had the time to capture some other images before this one at the other end of the beach, you'll see them here in the next days i think.

I also have here a view of this scene at dawn.

The hills around my village

Mountain road through the Provence hills

When i spend long times in the office i often need a little outdoor at the end of day.

This place is 7 km far from my village and really higher. The village is in the valley you can devine through the darkest hills in the background.
The little trick is that no car is allowed to take this road for many years. So last wednesday in the end of afternoon i thought that a little walk to these hills would be a nice way to change my mind after a full day of file processing and of administrative tasks.

A very narrow footpath climbs the hills through a deep forest. I took me a little more than one hour to get there and i've to say that once on the place i spent more time looking a the wild nature than making photos :)

I decided to go back at dusk and of course arrived in the forest by a dark night. The last kilometers in the narrow and slopy path covered by roots and stones were a little tiring. Arrived at home, i realized that i had a head lamp in my backpack :)

This panoramic landscape was stitched with PTGui Pro from 4 images taken with a soft ND filter. I tell that here because i've read that many people have problems while stitching images done with some ND grads. I really think that the problems don't come from the filters because i do that for many years and never noticed any trouble.

Blended Mediterranean colors - Zooming through the Hoya ND 400 filter

Mediterranean colors

When i was a teenager i was very kind of the zooming effect and used it on many portrait shots.

A few times ago i started to play again with that, mainly in relative low light and for this one in full day light but with the help of the Hoya ND 400 to slow down a little the exposure.

Another green shot - HDR in the forest

Cork tree in La Plaine des Maures

The bad weather of the previous months seriously disturbed my work and put me in a real hurry. So i had to work all the week end and even on May first which is the biggest non working day here.

Yesterday evening i needed to breath a little fresh air. I took my camera and drove to a place where there are red rocks on the ground, wild lavender and some little streams and ponds. I arrived a little before the good light and decided to explore a little bit the cork tree forest just near. Although it was a little walk to wait for the light i took the four exposures used in this image thinking it would give me the occasion to practice tone mapping a little more.
10 minutes later it was raining again :)

Ghost forest - Another step on the abstract way

Ghost forest

Landscape photography is my main interest for a long time but sometimes i like to make some different images.
It's never bad to add a little diversity to a portfolio and more important, sometimes i just need a little change. It makes me think and see differently and that also helps me in my most usual work.
Neuro scientists start to say that when we always repeat the same things, we always use the same highways in our brain but when we change, it starts to open some new little paths. Asian philosophers are saying the same for thousand years ...

A little more about me - complement to my ImageKind interview

Bau Rouge sunrise

I opened my ImageKind gallery just one year ago. I was tempted to do that sooner but i was a little frightned because i found really hard to search (and find) something on their website. So last year i found that the website was really better and i took the decision.
The IK team was very nice with me because i was a featured artist a few weeks after and they also featured the above image on their homepage.

A few months ago, i received an email from Emily at ImageKind asking if i would be ok for an interview. I hesitated a little because of my english and said yes. The interview was published two days ago on the IK blog. You can read it here. I'm very happy that's this feature arrived just for Earth Day.

After reading it i thought that it would be a good occasion to add a little more and so answer the few people who sometime ask about my life.

As told in the interview, i made some scientific studies specialized about computer things. I think i met my first computer when i was 12. It was a gray box made by Rockwell with a keyboard and a display made of 2 rows of red leds. After i had a few personal computers like Amstrad and Comodore. I bought my first PC in the early 80. It had a 640x480 monochrome display, 640 kb of ram, a 20 mb hard drive and the cost was about 1 500 euros ...

I had my first internet connection in 1987 or 88 i don't remember exactly. It was in the European Center for Nuclear Research where i was writing software to catch in a few seconds the billion events produced by particles shocks. It was a very exciting time of my life where i met some of the most famous physicians. We where working with some huge Vax computers and also some "home made" ones refreshed with water. They were looking like huge things with many pipes all around.

A few years after i had my own Compuserve connection with dialup modems. I'm not sure but i think that the first one was really under 9 600 bps.

After that i spent a few years working in the software industry before i became self employed. The move to photography is described in the interview.

Another very important thing in my life was rock climbing.
I spent around 20 years with just cliffs and boulders in my mind and was living with some friends sharing this passion. We were chasing the sun and the most overhanging rocks. Living this life while beeing in the same time a software engineer was a little tricky but also very exciting. I won't write more about this now, climbers and surfers know what is this way of life.

Last point : in the interview you can read that i'd love to run my own gallery. I've a place for that in the French Alps, just near Switzerland. I'd like it to be a nature and landscape gallery. Of course i would display my own work but i'd also like it to be a place where some other artists could organize their own exhibitions. That's not only a dream and i really think to that. Our life is just not ready for that now ...

Because flowers will die, buy a photo for Mother's day

Mediterranean colors at Bau Rouge beach in Provence

Yesterday i was searching with google about a calendar software and i found peoples selling flowers for mother's day. I realized that very often these flowers are most expensive than many of the prints you could find in my Print On Demand galleries.

So do not hesitate, a beautiful print can be an original gift which will stay for a lifetime.
You can have a look at my galleries at ImageKind and RedBubble.

A forest photo and a free powerful tool to backup your digital images

Provence forest at springtime

Managing a correct backup for digital photos is easier and cheaper than correctly archiving slides or negatives but it has to be done correctly.

Cobian Backup is certainly one of the most valuable free software i know.
All my photos are on hard drives inside my main computer and i use Cobian to copy them to some external drives.

It's a very complete software but really simple to use :

You setup some tasks with source and destination folders and when you want to backup you files you just run your tasks.

Tasks can be run manually or by an integrated automatic scheduler, they can make full or incremental or differential backups. You can define some files types you don't wan't to backup, you can use local drives, network drives or online servers as destinations (i really don't recommend to use an online server excepted if it's your own but do as you want).
Backup can be compressed or not, encrypted or not and the software can also shutdown correctly your computer when all tasks are terminated.

Another very important point : If Cobian backup has a problem with a file and can't work with it, it doesn't stops the task, it just skips the file and write the trouble he met in his log file. So when all tasks are done you can check the logs and see if all is ok or if you have some problematic files.

A little blog improvement

Birth of the day at Bau Rouge beach - Provence

I've just added a new little box in the sidebar to help for browsing photos.