Light on the field

Light on the field

Another view of the rural landscapes around my home.

I'm just back from a very short holidays in Jura mountains, the first image will be published here on friday.

Dusk light on the wheat field

Dusk light on the wheat field

An image done about one month ago on a hilltop of my close neighborhood.

I woke up before done yesterday for a deeper exploration of The Rural Landscapes Around My Home.
I drove a lot along many narrow rural roads but couldn't find a good place.
When i finally found an interesting point of view on some villages along the Rhône river, the sun was too high and the light too strong.

One tree in the light

Tree in the light

On june 10 i was making photos of the countryside in my neighborhood (like the one posted here).
I was standing with my tripod on a very small rural road. Suddenly i felt the light changing behind me. I turned my head and saw this tree. I just had to run a little on the road to find a good place for composing this image with the long lens that was ever mounted on my camera.

French countryside in Haute Savoie - Another view

French countryside in Haute Savoie

Another one in the serie about The Rural Landscapes Around My Home.

Like my Chéran Canyon image, this one was also done by stitching 3 photos with PTGui.

This morning, i went really soon the the Valserine valley and found a very interesting place with a nice view along the river. I hope you will see the first images here before the end of the week.

Weeky commented photo #23 - Rural landscape, mountains and clouds

Rural landscape before dusk in Haute Savoie

I'm still working on the serie about The rural landscapes around my home.
This image was done about one month ago. I was making photos of some rural fields in the light of the end of afternoon when i noticed these beautiful clouds formation over the mountains in the far background.

Scenes with such a dynamic range are not easy to capture :

• You can use some GND filters to balance highlights in the sky and foreground shadows
• You can make several shots of the scene with different exposures and then blend them digitally (using HDR method or not)

The day was a little wendy and i felt a little too lazy for multiple exposures.
So i mounted a 1.2 soft GND filter in front of my lens and could capture a raw file where highlights and shadows were both respected.

No information was lost but the raw file was difficult to process to obtain a nice photo. After many tries with curves tweaks, manual masking, etc i developped my raw files with three different exposure ajustments.
Then i used Picturenaut to produce and tonemap an hdr file.
The result was then saved as a 48 bits TIFF file that just needed some minor adjustments do give the photo you can see here.

I like to name things by their real names and for me such a worflow is not HDR Photography. There is no magic and whatever the algorithm you choose to process a single file, it can't give you more information that what is included into this single file.
If i would have shot the scene without the GND filter i would have exposed it to protect the sky for clipping and then the foreground would have been really underexposed. Then using any method to retrive informations in the shadows would have revealed more noise than image details.

Rural landscape around Loblaz viewed from the Vuache mountains

Loblaz from the Vuache mountain

Loblaz is a hamlet of Chaumont, the village where i live now.
I made this image in February during one of my walk on the Vuache mountain and i think it's a very good illustration of what are These rural landscapes around my home.

The rural colors of spring and some other things

Rural landscape around Frangy - Haute Savoie

One more in the serie about The Rural Landscapes Around My Home.

Some short news :

• I went before dawn this morning along the Chéran river in the Massif des Bauges natural park. For a first time it was not too bad.
• I've added yesterday 10 images from Corsica on my french website.

Blossoming trees in the garden and a few words about the recent Blogger problem

Blossoming trees in the field

This image is about one month old (april 12) and now the flowers are gone.
This field is just under my house and that's where i often go to drink my morning coffee :)

I've promised to post a weekly commented photo on this blog every Friday (see here).
As i'm not in the office every friday, i often use the schedule posts function in Blogger.
So, on Thursday i had a few time to write my WCP #19 post and schduled it for the next day.

But, during this period and until this morning Blogger encountered some big problems during a maintenance operation.

• It was first impossible to save correctly my post. After a few times it finally worked.
• Then Blogger went to read only mode.
• Then they "deleted" a huge amount of recent posts.
• When Blogger came back to normal mode this morning, i could see that my post was in the deleted batch.
• A few hours later it was still not published but it was restored in the admin panel and i just had to correct the schedule date and reenter the tags.

I use Blogger since 2007 and that's the first time i experienced a real problem. For me, they did a good job. I didn't loose anything but tags and they gave many information on their Twitter account.

Colors in the field

Colors in the field

Rural landscape around Frangy

Rural landscape around Frangy

This afternoon i went out to make a few more images for my serie These rural landscapes around my home (introduction here)

I was on the hill where my home is and shot the hills on the other side of the Usses valley.
Frangy is the name of the city in the valley and i can't find the name of the village in the picture :)

Another rural landscape at springtime

Rural landscape et springtime around Arcine - Haute Savoie

Another one done around Arcine, on my second day on the place.

Rural landscape at springtime near Arcine

Arcine is a village above the Rhône river near where i now live.
I went there yesterday evening for the first time and while i was waiting for the light on the river, i turned my (long) lens to the landscapes all around.
I think i missed this fresh green during my 15 years in Provence.

Rural landscape in the mist on Vuache mountain - Another version

Rural landscape in the mist on Vuache mountain

You can see here another version of this scene.

While this first one was done in a very deep mist and without any filter, the one posted today was done with a little more sun and the difference of lightness between the sky and ground was compensated by a soft gnd filter, giving different atmospheres in these two images.

Weekly commented photo #11 - These rural landscapes around my home

Rural landscape in winter on the Plateau des Daines

With this week commented photo, i introduce a new serie i'm working on for a few months and titled : These rural landscapes around my home.

The concept around this serie is something new for me.
I know live in a very rural place where people grow cows to produce milk. They cultivate cereals to feed their cows and to sell, they cut the woods to heat themselves during the winter, ...
The landscapes all around are not really impressives. There are flat areas, hills with vineyards, some little mountains and some high voltage power lines.

Since we arrived there last summer i spent many times walking and exploring our new surrounding. Although there is nothing very spectacular and the place can look very common i've started to photography these landscapes, with their trees, their rivers, etc.
In this work i don't try to chase the most impressive light, i just want to make images of this country where people live and work.

Why do i do that ?
I'm not really sure but i think that's because i feel that all these people wouldn't be what they are if the place wouldn't be what it is (not easy for me to write it in english) and my grand grand parents were living there ...

When i started with these photos, i thought i would keep them personnals.
Nothing is organized, i've no real shooting plan and i still don't know what i will do with the serie but i will continue.

A few of these landscapes are ever available in my stock on my french website and i start today to shwo some of my favs here.

End of the day on Vuache mountain

"End of the day on Vuache mountain

That's an image frome exactly one month ago.
It was done the same day than this one but a few time later really just before dusk. I ended the day walking down the forest path by night :)

Weekly commented photo #9 - The dead tree and the clouds

The dead tree and the clouds

It was a long week without blogging. I spent days and days driving in regions between the Alps where we live and Provence. The few time i had at home was for some office work. The weather was not really nice anywhere but i could at least make some garden images for one client but could'nt find some time to make photos for myself.

I arrived at home this night after a 1000 km long drive and spent an important part of the morning to solve a routing problem between my linux boxes.
After that i started to think about the image i could show and comment here today.

There were 2 or 3 nice ones in my most recent archives but i keep them for the days to come. Diving a little deeper in the old files, i found this one from november.
This field is just under my house and i often consider it as my own garden. It's a nice place very well exposed and i think i will be a perfect one for some spring naps.

In the last week of november i was making some work on our new but old house. The weather was sometimes cloudy, sometimes sunny and the wind really fresh, announcing the huge snow falls we had the weeks after.
In the end of afternoon, the light was more and more nice and i was more and more tired of carrying stones and concrete ...
I washed my hands, changed my clothes, took my usual photo gear and went to that field.
OK, the light was nice but what to do in this empty field with electric lines and houses in the background.
After a few minutes of intense thinking i decided that the light and wind would be perfect for a long exposure game with the clouds.
I found this old dead tree to have a nice silhouette and composed the image around him. Beeing without leaves was a good point for the long exposure.

Here comes the technical words, if you're not interested you can skip :)
The image was done with wide angle zoom (Sigma 10-20) at about 12 mm.
I used 2 filters :

• A 0.9 soft GND to balance sky and ground.
• A Hoya ND 400 for the long exposure in day light (a little more than 90 seconds).

Last words : The tree is now really dead, he was torn by the wind last week.

Post last words : This post is also a contribution to the Skywatch Friday meme.

Mist and clouds on Vuache mountain

Mist and clouds on Vuache mountain

Rural landscape in the mist on Vuache mountain

Rural landscape in the mist on Vuache mountain

I love this mountain because i can climb to the top while leaving my car at home.
Just perfect when you need a breath of fresh air after some hours on phone with clients.

I went there on friday afternoon. Our house was in the mist and i guessed that the top of the mountain would be sunny ...
After about one hour walk i was still in the mist (and did this image) but a few moment later and a very few meters higher i had a very short time of sun with a beautiful view on a nice sea of mist and clouds bathing the mountain forest.

When the winter looks like spring

Winter afternoon on the Vuache mountain

Click on the image to get a larger size :)

Yesterday afternoon i went to the Vuache mountain. It's elevation is about 1000 meters and at the end of november it was looking like that.
On the upper left corner of the image there is the Tournette mountain (more than 2300m high). I've ever seen it with more snow in july ...

For being honnest, the amazing weather we have for about one week is really pleasant and hiking the mountains wearing just a T shirt is not so bad. Most of all i had a very beautiful light at sunset time :)

White landscape in the mist

White landscape in the mist

Another from the same serie than the one presented one week ago.
I think this one is my favorite.

This is my second contribution to SkyWatch Friday.
Click on the image to see it larger :)