Picture of the day !

I'm still working on the postprocessing of my pictures taken in South West of France. I needed to go outside and came to my favorite local spot for birds in the very damp and warm late afternoon. So, hereunder, the shot of the day:

The light was rather low after 7 PM . Only three shots of the burst were sharp. Of course, you can have a look at the two others.

Flower power ;)

Today, the sky is overcast. This is the right weather for flower photography, because there is no shadow. So I went to the botanic garden of Bagatelle in Paris.
This picture could be my best shot of the day.

Birds ...

Summer is coming on Northern France eventually ! This is time for me to enjoy the long day time and the nice evening nights. Some days ago, when it was still cold and rainy, I spent some time watching videos about photography and I saw this one, more than interesting, about bird photography.
I decided to apply the rules given by this professional photographer. Do you know what ? It works !

Some examples :

Blue hour in Paris

Few shots taken yesterday in Paris at the blue hour, especially long those days.

Panorama

I decided to try the new panorama merging feature of the last Lightroom release. During my trip in Provence, I took eight or nine shots of the mountain nicely lit by the evening sun. My camera was handheld and I tried  to rotate it properly to avoid parallax issues, even if at that distance from the object the risk is rather low. I used manuel settings to keep the same exposure and was confident in the automatic white balance to be consistent during the shots. Then I just used the very simple feature of Lightroom and postprocessed the entire image as usual. The original image size is larger than 75 MP ! Of course, here you get only a small JPEG export (1200 px wide).

Pink flamingos and horses

 

Provence and Camargue

Teaser ...

Long exposures

A friend of mine lent me a ND 1000 filter for my vacation in California. What this filter does is very simple: it reduces the light coming through the lens by a factor of 1000. It means, in daytime even with a bright sun, you can have an exposure of several seconds. Then, the sea and the sky are altered significantly and it is possible to convey unique ambiances. Of course, this trick has been known for a long time. I tried to play with it and you can see some examples below. The pictures were shot from North to South, from Fort Bragg to Point Reyes. The filter has a side effect as a kind of color cast, so it is important to shoot in raw format. I also tried black and white processing to enhance the contrast and the texture.

Architecture

Even if I was more in the mood for wildlife and nature photography, I could not stay in the Bay Area without taking some pictures in San Francisco.
Architecture has always been difficult for me. For the first picture, I missed the ideal blue hour, so I decided to take some advantage of the clear sky and the full and bright moon to make something spectacular maybe somehow exaggerated. The next three pictures are taken in late afternoon. Is it really called the sentinel building ?

Some photographs shot in the bay of Monterey

Do you really want to swim there ? There were some courageous people on kayaks ... According to the biologist on board, some big sharks live in this area too. They are just invisible from the surface but the scars on the seals make no doubt. However, this place is an amazing place to see a wonderful wildlife. It reminds me Yellowstone.

Other creatures are more friendly

Some pictures from Northern California

Hi

Some examples of the beautiful landscapes and the wonderful wildlife of Califonia.

Spring is coming

Some pictures taken around Versailles. I played a little bit with my 300 mm without the 1.4 converter, I use most of time. The sharpness can be really good.

Some colours now

Taken the same day in Paris

Some views of Paris

Yesterday, a colleague organized a tour in Paris to take some pictures, following Brassaï's spirit. He defined an interesting path around l'île de la Cité. It's always difficult for me to think in black and white. But I tried to convey the pleasant ambience of yesterday evening. It was a rather warm day for the end of winter: a weather more often encountered in May here. A lot of people were outside.