Barbennaz waterfall and 5 sites to discover

Barbennaz waterfall
A closer view of Barbennaz waterfall (first one posted here).
It's an image from august. I arrived there in the late afternoon but had to wait a long time before the light was soft enough, at least it gave me some time to explore the place and find interesting points of view.

The 5 sites to discover :

• Scott Linstead
  Scott Linstead is a nature and wildlife photographer, working with color and black and white.

• Daniel H Bailey
  Adventure and outddor photographer based in Alaska.

• Ben Attenbach
  Some very wonderful nature and landscape photography. I can't say more.

• Douglas J Eng
  Beautiful and various images from different styles.

• Daniel Shea
  Contemporary photographer from Chicago.

Barbennaz waterfall and some news from the Alps

Barbennaz waterfall

So on july 24 after some weeks spent packaging our stuff, we left Provence to come and live in the french Alps.
A few days later i recovered a decent DSL connection but just used it a little bit. Too many hard word in our new but very old house and no really time to spend processing images i've started to make while exploring the landscape all around.

Some new images of the Verne river

Waterfall on Boulin stream
just before it's junction with the Verne river

In my last post about this place i was saying that i would probably not return there this year because of the low water level at the end of spring ...

But last week we had some impressive flash floods killing more than 20 peoples in our department. Fortunately, the huge forest were we live seems to have some very good natural protections and although some huge amounts of rain nothing realy bad came in our area.
That said, at least it puts some water in the rivers. So this morning i woke up before 5 am and went to the place where the Boulin stream joins the Verne river.
Climbing at 6 am on little cliffs covered by wet moss is always an amazing experience when you wear rubber boots but nothing went wrong and i could make a few interesting and i guess rare images before 8 am.

I love this place because it's wild and unknown and probably also because my inconscient knows that these little streams and rivers are the life sources of our country : A few kilometers far from these little waterfalls, the Verne river is "closed" by a dam and it's lake is the main source of drinking water for the Saint-Tropez area ...


Junction between Boulin stream and Verne river

Corsica - A waterfall in the green forest

Saparelle waterfall - Corsica

 

Another one of the multiple waterfalls around Saparelle in North Corsica.

LINKS:
My waterfalls, rivers and streams photo gallery.
All my images about Corsica.

Saparelle waterfalls - Hoya ND 400 goes to Corsica mountains

Saparelle waterfall - Corsica

As the weather is still awfull, i've spent 2 days exploring the streams around Saparelle village in the mountains above our home.

All these little rivers are very beautiful, walking there without any path is a nice rambling party and i've to say that i really don't regret the 10 euros i've spent in a brand new pair of rubber boots :)

A natural japanese garden in the red rocks

I'm a little late for the first post of this new decade but after a bit of celebration i spent the first days hiking and shooting in the cold.

We have two important projects for this new year. First we will be traveling in Corsica from the mid of january to the end of march. Traveling is not the real word because we'll have a house and some animals to take care but i hope some beautiful photographic opportunities.

The second project is a bigger one and i think you will know more at springtime.

Happy New Year to all !

The little river with the little waterfall - HDR

The little river with the little waterfall

In the late autumn i like to visit this little river in the forest around my village.
We didn't had too much rain this autumn and i could stand up in the middle of the river bed and add a new point of view to my image collection.

This one was done from 3 exposures processed with Photomatix and Silkypix.

HDR waterfall in the forest

Waterfall in Provence forest

The bad weather is still there and i stuck with my archives.
I took the 3 exposures used here in 2008 december and they where sleeping on an hard drive. Today was their day.

A high definition waterfall photo you can browse with zoomify

Done and posted here a little more than one year ago, this image became one of my most popular photo.

It was made by stitching 9 frames with PTGui. The resulting file was cropped to fit the desired aspect ratio and the final image weights around 25 megapixels.
I thought i could deserve a detailed view with zoomify. Once more, what you can see here with zoomify is from a compressed jpeg file and doesn't exactly reflects the real file quality but i can give an idea of what we can do with softwares like PTGui.

LINKS :
My waterfalls, rivers and streams photo gallery.
All my waterfall images.

Waterfall - a larger view

Waterfall in Provence forest

I've ever posted a square photo of this waterfall but i also like this new version :)

Following the stream

Waterfall in Provence forest

An other one of this little stream running threw the deep forest around the Chartreuse de la Verne.

Some water running in the deep forest

Running water in Provence forest

One shot of my most recent hike threw the deep forest around the Chartreuse de la Verne.

Just moved a little bit

Waterfall in the Vallon de Durand - Provence

Same stream, same waterfall, same day, just left the river bed, walked a little bit and climbed on some rocks overhanging over the fall.

Waterfall after the rain

Waterfall in the Vallon de Durand - Provence

After many days of strong rain the sun came back yesterday. This afternoon i spent a few hours in the Vallon de Durand taking some photos of this waterfall and running stream.

This image was done from two horizontal photos stitched together with PTGui 8.02.
As i'm a lazy guy i still don't have downloaded the new beta version of PTGui which includes raw processing from dcraw routines. So my D200 nef were processed with SilkyPix before beeing stitched.
In fact i really love the SilkyPix results and in the future i'm not sure i'll use the raw processing embeded in PTGui but that's a nice thing that this wonderful software always offers more and more possibilities to its users.

Just back from Corsica

Waterfall in Corsica

It's not often that i have to stay a long time without any internet connection.
I'm just back from a 10 days work trip in Corsica. It was to shoot gardens and pools in some new villas. Villas, gardens and pools were beautiful but they were also very new and didn't had any land line phone.

Corsica is also known as the Island of beauty and after many trips there i've to say that i'm always amazed by the wonderfulness of her nature. Unfortunately i only had a very short time to shoot some landscapes because good lights were reserved for my work shots. The first afternoon, before things really start, i could have a bath in a river with pools and waterfalls. This shot was done from a big rock in the middle of the waterfall pool.

Waterfalls

Provence waterfall
Last week, after a few raining days, i spent some time in a little canyon to make some waterfalls images. A few years ago, these canyons always had some running water but now they are often dry.

The one i choose was narrow, deep and covered by autumn forest.
I had to walk about one hour in a wild and sharp vegetation to find the scene i was looking for : A stream running between mossy rocks and a little waterfall.
The place was very dark so it was not difficult to obtain the silky water effect but i had just a few time to make my photos. I rapidly found two or three dry and almost flat places to put my tripod and took a few shots. Shutter speed was between 15 and 30 sec for all of them.
Next, i put the tripod legs (and mines) in the water to try some more impressive photos. I didn't kept the corresponding images because running water made vibrating tripod and the shots were not as sharp as i wanted. It was just a try ...

Just after the night was there and i came back with my head lamp. Back home, i started to sort and process my raw files (about 20) and kept 5.

Just one technical thing :
A few years ago, long exposure often gave noisy digital images. Now at ISO 100, the Nikon D200 gives excellent results with 30 seconds exposure, even after 20 shots.


Autumn stream in Provence