An inspiring moment here by the water … and no camera to capture it with. With only hand luggage on a trip to visit family in the UK, my DSLR remained at home in France.

Beautifully calm, this morning brought early sunshine; rays of sunlight burning through a light mist hanging over the water. An unusually still Cormorant (!) seemed to relish the moment, although it’s said that these coastal birds are often seen ashore holding their wings out in the sun after diving for fish.

With boats tethered on the estuary resting peacefully on their moorings, and a gathering of other water birds enjoying wading in its muddy banks, this moment was asking to be photographed.  Oh for my camera and tripod!

So, the above is just a poor substitute from my Android Phone, taken from the end of the pier belonging to the house I was staying in. I shall dedicate some time with my trusty DSLR along this beautiful piece of coast line in the future.

Maybe I should just call this a recce…

The deck chair beckons. With dappled sunlight of the olive grove and a gentle breeze, it invites me to relax and read the paper … to allow my eyes to absorb the view of the village nestling in the hills.

Alas, such peaceful indulgence will have to wait a while.

I’m currently in the middle of developing a web application that is going to take me at least another month. It’s rewarding work, creating and producing in a different way.

From the Archives

As with most photographers, I gather, there’s often an abundance of images in the archives. Images waiting to be discovered or for that little bit of love to get them “out there”.

So this deck chair is from my own archives. Dreams of a warm autumn afternoon under the olive trees…

Yesterday saw a trip to the all new Perpignan TGV station from where my daughter would be travelling to Barcelona.

I admit to a feeling of love at first sight when I caught a glimpse of the station’s amazing new look.

Feat of Engineering

Over the last few years, France and Spain have been co-operating in building a new TGV line down to the South Coast of Spain. What a feat of engineering it has been! A new tunnel has been bored underneath the Pyrennees and a totally new track laid all the way down to Barcelona.

I’ve read somewhere that we’ll soon be able to take the TGV all the way through Europe from Savilla, right down near the Portugese border, to Stockholm (Sweden). That’s over 3000km according to Google maps! How true this is or when it will be in place, I’m not sure, but it sure sounds great.

Perpignan TGV Station

Anyway, back to Perpignan. Modern architecture continues to fascinate me – I love it. The French truly have a flair for it with their spirited style and fantastically bright colours.

So feast your eyes on this superb piece of town design. Dazzling colours, enchanting perspectives, amazing achievement and conundrums of construction.

What do they have in common ….

Normally nothing!  But today, everything !

At the end of a Portrait session Dad turned up in his old Citroen “Frog” which resulted in the following image.  I wanted to bring out the character of this lovely old car whilst leaving Mother and Daughter untouched!  I also added a monochrome wash over the background to increase the separation between it and the car.

I’m always drawn back to the sea and boats and sailing … an inexplicable attraction, a need.

Perhaps it’s the inevitable feeling of tranquility, or perhaps a “back to childhood” moment – who knows?

The Elements and Me

To be out on the estuary sailing in a dingy, alone relishing the elements – nothing too heroic you understand – just me, the wind and the tides; it’s so absorbing, there could be nothing else in the world that matters. The focus of mind and body, acting in harmony with the dingy, the water and the wind.

Then there’s the return to land, terra firma, with legs tired as if they’ve run a marathon, but an overall feeling of well-being; I feel invigorated and alive.

May be it’s that that draws me back to the sea … an elemental feeling of well-being.

Archives

So here is a photo that I took about this time last year and have been drawn back to – I can almost smell the harbour. It brings a smile to my face and makes me want to trawl through my archives to search out some more treasures…

Want to join me … ?

I’m very excited to have been included in the first e-copy of the L’Artiste magazine which is now available FREE and online.

Not only that but in the next issue there will be a full feature and interview with me, so be sure to call back and have a look!

see L’Artiste magazine for more details

I know, I know …

It’s been absolutely ages since I posted, tweeted, bumped, commented and uploaded … well, I’ve been busy!  Travelling to the UK (and a no internet home!) and then catching up.

Dark Rooms

No, no, not that type.  Old castles and Chateaux! Last week, i went and did a photo shoot for a really, really old house, possibly, some of the house dated back to the 14th and 15th Century and may have been an Apocathery for the Church and Abbey just across the street.  So the point of this history lesson? Old houses are more often than not quite dark and dingey!

Living Room

The main living room, as you can see in the above photo, has beautiful stone features but VERY small windows!  So either you would need 1000′s of Watts or half a dozen bowen flashes.  Both of these are a) out of my budget and b) I don’t fancy carrying them around with me all day!

Flashes

So rather than multiple flash heads, I decided to use mutliple frame flashes (with the flash in different places, behind the settee, under the coffee table, in the corner under the arch etc….) and a 3 frame HDR sequence. As it turned out the HDR sequence wasn’t absolutely necessary and this week-end I might try processing this without.  But I like the HDR effect for an old property like this – it’s different with a modern apparrtment.

So using Relight from Oloneo which is part of their Photo-Engine product (I really like Oloneo Photo-Engine for HDR!!!) I combined the 6 frames to produce 1 tiff.  I then overlayed this in Photoshop, over the HDR image.

Light on … Light Off

Oloneo Relight enables you to turn up and down the power of each frame and thus of each light.  Added to that, you can also change the white balance of the lights to get a cleaner, less orange glow, without having to merge layers in Photoshop.

Conclusions

For me, with old dark houses to photograph, this technique is going to make a huge difference.  I know that the technique has been around for a while masking in and out different areas, but this way is going to be so quick.

Set the camera up on manual, place the flash, fire a frame … repeat n times!

JOB DONE! … What do you think?

Simplest Pleasures

Some of the simplest things in life seem to bring such enormous pleasure.  Yesterday, having dropped my mother off at the airport after her brief stay, I took a different route home.  Wandering back cross-country, through areas that I had barely seen before, I was taken in by this setting of serenity.

Back Roads

Winding through the Languedoc countryside, approaching the Minervois hills just west of Carcassonne, this peaceful, isolated area offered small, single-track roads, hardly any habitation and, as one grows to expect in this area, miles and miles of vineyards.

Sheltering from the Sun

Each wine growing region has its own variety of shelters built by the vine workers; sometimes hollowed out of piles of stone, sometimes nooks carved into a rock face.  In this region you find small houses like this one in various shapes and sizes, dotted randomly across the countryside.

This one caught my eye as it stood by a ploughed field separating it from its surroundings – the foothills of the Black Mountains providing a spectacular backdrop.

Setting up

This was a precarious shot.  With my tripod spanning a deep ditch on the edge of the single track road, the occasional passing car made only the minimum effort to slow down.  Hurtling past me within inches, I glimpsed curious faces pressed against the window and not much evidence of looking where they were going!

As you can see, I lived to tell the tale ….

A 3 frame HDR, -2,0+2EV processed in Photomatix 4 and Photoshop layers, with some dodging and burning.

More images from my French Villages Collections

A Weekend Break

A few weeks ago we took a weekend break down on the coast, about an hour’s drive from our house.  The weather was OK, without being fantastic.  It had been raining the previous few days and the wind, as quite often is the case, was strong and blustery

Spring Beach

But the up-shot of all that, is the air was clear and the views, just spectacular!

There can’t be many areas, particularly in Europe, where you can be wandering along the beach with your toes dipping into a “not too cold” sea, with the snow capped mountains in the background.

Storm Damage

At this time of the year, in complete contrast to July and August, the beaches are devoid of (human) life.  No jostling for space, no screaming kids, no frisbees landing on you while trying to take a nap in the sun … just us and our two dogs rushing around enjoying the wind in their ears and playing and playing.

But winter leaves an impressive mark on the beaches.  They are quite often a completely different shape to the year before.  Taller, flatter, longer, more dunes … and of course, absolutely littered with debris.  Tree trunks, logs, branches, loads of bamboo and of course all sorts of man made litter…

Likely Subjects

So, for a photographer, there are plenty of potential subjects to break up the foregrounds, zoom in on or put into soft focus.

To this end, here is a small gallery of my vision, my way of seeing and interpreting these interesting angles…

Our village boasts an 11th and 12th century Chateau situated at the heart of the village and partly surrounded by a small park.

A few weeks ago I spent a fabulous evening with a group of ladies from the USA doing some group portraits as a memento of their visit to France.

They were staying at the Chateau and we were able to use the specatcular backdrop of the Chateau and grounds.

What a fun evening and an interesting group of Ladies!