Some other autumn leaves

Autumn leaves in the Hautes Alpes forest

Some autumn news

Agnielles river in autumn - Hautes Alpes

So, i left this blog untouched for about one month for many reasons :

• I spent many time in october meeting clients and planning things for next year.

• I wanted to work on my french website patmo.net

• I moved to make some autumn shots. The place where i live is beautiful but most of the trees here are ever green and that's really not the best place for making images of autumn colors.
  So we decided to take some days to move to some alpine regions. We took the van and went first to the little Agnielles valley in Hautes-Alpes. We arrived by night and the next day we could could discover that the place was beautiful (really beautiful) but cold (really cold). So after one day exploring and making photos we decided to leave and move to the Drome region where some friends live. It's not a hot place in october but at least my wife and daughter could stay at friend's home while i was hiking in the cold.

Mountain landscape near Die - Drome

The other side of Bau Rouge beach

Morning light at Bau Rouge beach

Regular readers will easily recognize the cliff in the background.
Here we are still on Bau Rouge beach but not on the part of the beach where i usually go. This one is some hundreds of meters more to the west but we can't move from one part to another by feet while carrying some photographic equipment.
This place is less wild and looks more to a real beach than the other one. I hope i'll find a way to go still more to the west.

On the beach before the rain - HDR

Bau Rouge beach before the rain

A few time after the rainbow posted in my previous post.
And for the newest readers, you can have a look here at my tips for HDR landscapes, they also work for seascapes :)

Rainbow over the sea

Rainbow over the Mediterranean sea

I wake up a long time before dawn to make some images of a mountain around Toulon.
While driving i saw that the sky was really not the one i was expecting.
So i decided to change my destination and to go the the sea.

After some hours of typical images of cloudy dawn i was about to leave and go back when the rainbow appeared. Sometimes, photographers are just lucky :)

Golden rocks at the sea

Morning light around Le Port du Niel

Just around Le Port du Niel, same day than the one in the previous post but about one hour later.
This islands all around are called Golden Islands ...

A very soft dawn on the Mediterranean coast

Mediterranean dawn at Le Port du Niel

During the second part of august, we went twice to sleep at the sea. To park the van we choose the little pier of Le Port du Niel on the Presqu'île de Giens. That's a very peaceful place and you can't see it on these images but the coast all around is really wild and beautiful. I hope to return there before the end of summer for a more serious photographic work.

Morning light on Le Port du Niel

Colorful houses in Provence village - HDR

Rue Galilée in Collobrières - Provence

As many of you seem to like this kind of pictures, here's a new one :)

Same place and same day than this one.

Dusk on the Gapeau river

Dusk on the Gapeau river

The Gapeau runs to the sea not too far from my home. I was driving along the river one of the past evenings and found the light beautiful ...

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 old bridge on the Durance river

Another image done while i with driving back from the Alps. This old bridge crosses the Durance river just near Manosque in Provence. I arrived there at dusk time and the most difficult thing was to find 5s to expose the photo without beeing distrubed by any car :)

The one under was done 4 years ago, just before a big storm.

Abstraction in the forest

Eucalyptus barks on forest ground

A little street in Puget Thenier

A little street in Puget Thenier

Puget Thenier is a little village above Nice in the Alpes Maritimes region. We went there for a mandolin festival and i took a few shots to post here.

For this one i did 3 things i very rarely do :

• I shoot right in the middle of the day.
• I didn't use any tripod.
• I exposed the shot for the highlights and then did a HDR processing with 3 exposures from the same raw file.

The heart field

Heart field in Provence Alps

Just after dusk, we were walking with my daughter on a little mountain road when she noticed this field on the other side of the valley. She told Look at it, it looks likes a heart. After a little time (going back to the van to take some photographic stuff) we took this one. It was almost a night shot.

Another one of this cloudy day

Cloudy sky over Bau Rouge beach

Same place, same day but a few hours later than the one posted here.

I think i can give you some reasons about why i don't have posted anything here for about one week.
I had to change my main computer and i'm still in that task. Reinstalling softwares, rebuiliding monitor and printers profiles, checking files copies etc ...
I hope i'll be able to post something new before the end of the week.

Dont fall in love, you may be changed to stone

Pénitents des Mées - Alpes de Haute Provence

This is a famous place in the north of Provence.
It was on my way while i was driving back from the Alps. I stopped the van, walked a little in the country and took a dizain of views which i just stitched with PTGui. (Click on the thumbnail for large view).

A legend say that these rocks are monks changed to stone by Saint Donat because they felt in love with some slaves captured during a crusade.

A winter day at the sea and 5 sites to discover

Mediterranean seascape on the Presqu'île de Giens

About this image :
Same day and same place that this one posted a few monts ago. They are though very different.

The five sites to discover :

http://www.markpaulda.com
I met Mark on Flickr. He travels a lot in Europe and his galleries are full of landscapes, cityscapes, abstracts etc. I love the dynamism of his images.

http://www.danielsroka.com
Daniel is a master of botanical abstracts. His work is very beautiful.

http://www.brucepercy.com/
Stunning images from many parts of the world.

http://www.adamgibbs.com/
Photography by Adam Gibbs. A master of large format film. Visit and enjoy, i can't say anything else.

http://www.colourlovers.com
Not a photography site but can be very useful to anybody who works with colours.

Some clouds over the mountains

Hautes-Alpes landscape near Notre Dame du Laus

Another one from our recent trip in the Alps, done just around our van parking :)

Cabanon in Provence

Cabanon in Provence

Cabanon is the name given here to these tiny houses built in country field to keep the tools when workers are gone and to provide a fresh place for lunch or nap.

This one is just a few km far from my home and still has it's initial function but today must of them are either abandonned or bought by some people and transformed in week end houses.

This image is a mix of HDR and "normal" exposure. The cabanon itself and the foreground field are from an HDR image done with 3 exposures and the other parts are form one of these 3 exposures.
The mix is mainly because the photo was done by a very windy evening and tree leaves where moving too strongly to build an HDR image without ghosting artifacts.