Nîmes Walkabout

Nîmes is one of those cities that we keep driving past on the auto-route and have never actually stopped to have a look.  In fact, the huge residential tower blocks on the out-skirts are enough to put anyone off!  But it's only a couple of hours drive from my house, so off I went for a walk about.

Nimes is a Roman city.  In fact it was a large fortress town even before that.  But the Romans took over it from a Gaulish clan and built a busy thriving fortified town.  Among it's ruins it boasts the best preserved and totally in tact Roman temple and an amphitheatre that used to seat 20,000 people and is now used for Concerts throughout the summer.

Nîimes is also famous for the Pont de Gard.  the large roman aqueduct built to supply the Roman settlement with copious amounts of water.  The Castellum is the point of arrival of the 50kms of aqueduct and is a circular tank carved into the rock.  From here lead pipes carried the water around the city.  And all this over 2000 years ago.

Here is a dawn view across the square and amphitheatre towards the chapelle St Perpétue

Pot calling the kettle black!

When we moved to the South of France and bought our rambling uncared for house, there were no ends of pots, pans, hooks, fire baskets and the such like left in the "summer" kitchen.  Yes, two kitchens, the summer kitchen half-open to the outside, was used in summer for normal cooking but also to process all the harvests of fruit and veg to be stored up for winter.  Well, on our ramshackled excuse for a summer kitchen, the roof fell in and earlier this year, I started to tidy-up the pile of rubble that had been sitting there for the last 18 months.

Now, we have old pots, pans and fire baskets dotted around the garden.

Single frame HDR, 1/50 at F2.8, PS & Topaz Adjust

Adobe lens Correction

As the volume of my photos has started building up and the speed at which this is increasing has also ramped up, I have started trying to tighten-up my workflow.  I bought DxO, when I first started, used it for a while and then gave up in favour of Lightroom 3.  LR3 seems to have pretty much everything a photographer could need for the main workflow and where it hasn't, you can easily add a plug-in or link to another external applications, such as Photomatix.

Anyway, the other day, I was looking at the lens correction algorithm in LR3 and found that it didn't fully correct the barrel distortion on a 17mm wide angle view.  I flicked over to my long neglected copy of DxO and looked at the same RAW file and found instantaneous and accurate correction.  It had immediately recognised the camera model, lens and focal length used on the photo and made all the neceesary corrections.

So adding to that debate that seems to be trickling along in the back ground, about Adobe's freely published lens profile utility,  it doesn't seem worth the paper it isn't written on to me!  Compare these 2 images, one from DxO and one from LR3 - I didn't want to interfere with this comparison, so they are both the basic RAW files from a bracketed set with no other adjustments done other than lens corrections, so please excuse the colour and other quality issues!

see also: PhotographyforRealEstate

PS: A big thanks to Brian Matiash for his fantastic (and free) series on workflow.  For the emerging photographers like myself, this kind of resource is invaluable - and it's FREE.  Check it out at http://brianmatiash.com/blog/hdr-best-practices-guide/

Star Sapphire Compass Pendant

This afternoon's photo shoot was of a beautiful Star Sapphire Pendant with a surprise on the other side.  A precision built military water resistant compass!

All beautifully handmade by Rockwaterstudio.

That time of day ... Rosé time!

13-Aug-2010

From a recent property shoot, laying out the cool courtyard, with small pool and fountain burbling away, oohhh let's just sit down and relax a little!

Also, my first major shoot using my new Promote Control (on a Canon 450D) - will be writing about this soon. Please comment if you are interested

7 frame RAW, processed in Oloneo PhotoEngine <- First time using it!

Caune Minervois

05-Aug-2010

A small village nestled into the foot hills of the Black Mountains, just a short distance from the famous cite of Carcassonne, Caune Minervois was THE home of marble in France.  The first recorded settlement here was in 780AD, although other settlements probably existed before then

There is undoubtedly lots of history and stories surrounding the Albigensian Crusade and the Cathares, but I'm not going to cover that now.

Because this area is so rich in marble, where the local colour is a deep blood red, you find marble used everywhere, pavements (sidewalks), window munions, seats, corners of houses and fireplaces.

7 frame RAW, processed in Photomatix, PS and Topaz.

Narbonne Street Corner

Week 31, ending 01-Aug-2010

The town of Narbonne lies in the heart of the Languedoc area in south-western France.  The town has been here for eons, back in Roman times circa 118BC, Caesar moved his garrison here to get away from revolts in Marseille.  The town grew and sat on the cross-roads of the two main roman roads in the region, thevia Domitia and via Aquitaina.  About 10 years ago, whilst renovating the main town square, the construction company uncovered part of the original via Domitia - right there in the main square, which has been there now for over 2000 years - wow!!!

There is a rich mix of architecture around the town, from the Bishop's Palace over looking the town square dating back to 1134 to some stunning modern architecture too.  All very small scale though, as nothing is allowed to over-shadow the Cathedral.

Here is a lovely mix of the old and new, with the modern apartment block buiilt as a backdrop to this small corner tower, dating back about 150 years.

Single frame RAW, processed in Photomatix, PS and Topaz.

Avignon festival of Theatre

Week 31, ending 01-Aug-2010

You may be forgiven for thinking this is from some exotic location in the far east ... but, recently, I visited the town of Avignon, France during the Festival of Theatre, the largest theatre festival in the world, which lasts a whole month and has over 900 registered shows.  That's not including all the street performers either.  Well, Avignon is busy anyway, but during this festival it is heaving, noisy, hot and full-on. I happened to walk past a band playing on a street corner and stopped to listen to some very good folk-jazz mix.  the band wasn't a very photogenic crowd though and I then noticed this gentleman waiting for his turn to perform...

What do you think?

A study in Still Life

Week 30, ending 25-July-2010

This was a little bit of fun.  I remember the days of being set Still Life Studies at Art School, so thought I might have a go with some fruit given to me by a friend ... read more here

What do you think?

Church at Ouveillan

Week 28, ending 11-July-2010

The church at Ouveillan.  I don't know much about this church but stumbled upon it when cutting across country from one photo shoot to another.  The village of Ouveillan's only claim to fame is as the birth place of the famous french scultor René Iché.  Otherwise, the village nestles in amongst the Languedoc wine growing area.  A village, likes it's neighbours, that you might otherwise drive past without turning your head. I was taken by this view, by the contrast between the cleaned and bleached stones against the clear blue sky.