Wow, first real "professional" event for me. I have been involved in sport events in the past but that never implied so much personal pressure on the outcome. Here it was all about immortalizing one of the most imortant day of two perfect strangers. Luckily I was helped by the amazing Franck Oinne who has been doing this for years and is an experienced professionnal wedding photographer. (is website HERE). Today I'm telling everything about that first incredible experience. Franck and I are not long time friends, in fact we've met this summer during a wedding. He was working there and with his natural kindness and very social personality we happened to exchange about photography. As a joke I asked him if he was not looking for an intern or an assistant on some events and to my big surprise he actually said Yes (very appropriate answer for a wedding). He told me that he could actually see a wedding where he could actually add me into and that he will let me know after discussing it with the futur bride and groom. One week later I've got a phone call from him telling me that it was no problem for the futur husband and wife and that I was very welcome to join him on the 23rd of September for that very special day. We had two little meeting before the D-Day just to discuss the organisation of the wedding and plan ahead equipment and what to do. It felt good to work with someone that really knows his business. Okay let's move on to the Big Day. As usual an early morning, it seems like whatever you do in photography it is always involves an early start - 6.15 A.M. Quick shower, check up of the gear, already prepared the evening before, loading up the gear in the car after a cup of tea and I'm gone to pick up Franck and his gear for 7.30 A.M. Then direction La Digne d'Aval, a small vilage close to Limoux where we are meeting up with the Bride and her maids to do the "preparation of the bride" shooting. Just for the record I found it a very destabilising situation when you are a male photographer arriving in a middle of a group of very excited youg ladies that you have never met before. Luckily, all of them were absolutely lovely and it was very easy to break the ice with them. They offered us breakfast and everything, it was great. I don't usually have breakfast so the choice was easy for me. After waiting for the ladies to finish their breakfast and the arrival of the hairdresser, work finally started. A couple of hours and hundreds of pictures later, Franck and myself grabbed the car to meet up with the BOYS and take some shots of the groom getting ready. That part on the other hand was fairly quick ! It jsut consisted in taking pictures of the groom getting dressed up and being helped by his best-man. Obviously this was a fake "dressing up" session as the wedding was not happening until several hours later. Then back with the girls ! Most of them were nearly done with their make-up and hairdressing. To thanks Melanie & Arnaud for "granting" me access to their celebration I decided to bring them a little gift, a bottle of champagne. I thought they might drink it during their wedding night but the girls decided differently and suggested to head outside of the house and to take some pictures in the backyard while enjoying a glass of bubbles. It turned out to be a very fun shooting session as the girls wanted to take the pose over a series of large hay balls. After this pleasant exercise and our glass of "champ", time finally came to dess up for the girls and especially the bride ! Then, it was time to ahead toward the City Hall, but before that, we stopped by a little vinyard and its castle to take immortalize the "meeting" of our lovers. First time they were seeing each others in their wedding clothes. Very beautiful moment. I forgot to mention that these two love birds had rented a great oldschool VW beetle for the occasion !! It was in mint condition, a pure beauty. It is indeed time for the first big step of the day,... Getting married at the City Hall ! and meet up with the first guests. I can't put all the pictures on one single blog article and I have to keep some for our newly married lovers. Closing this little parenthesis... this leads us to the next big moment of the day... The religious celebration at the Church. Time to celebrate !!! After a group picture outside of the church everyone jumped in his car to head to the celebration place, a lovely domain called "La Bichonnière" (Have a look at there website, it is a stunning place !) We took some pictures on the way here, with a long lane of cars escorting our married couple and then did some more group pictures before doing a photographic exercise we had planned ahead with Franck, a "levitation" shot. Here above I'm just showing the final result but in fact it is a rather simple technique, consisting in taking two shots, one with the main subject on a chair or ladder doing some kind of funky moves, then a second shot from the same place and the same settings without the subject and the ladder/chair. Then you just combine both picture on Photoshop and use the eraser on the chair to create the flying effect. Then, we dived into the celebration time, aimated by great bandas group, several little buffets with lush food. By that time I think I was already down to more than 1000 pics. Again, lots of lovely people, lots of pictures and I can't put them all up. And I need to save some for Mélanie & Arnaud <3.
So I'm gonna finish on these last ones and say a great thanks you to Mélanie & Arnaud but also to Franck Oinne for letting me be part of that very special day. I have learnt a lot and I really enjoyed taking pictures of all these wonderful people that you call familly and friends. The rest of the pictures are on their way.
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Very quite week in terms of wildlife observations despite several trips to different locations to try to find something decent to shoot. Therefore I came back to basics with some handball photography over the weekend. It felt good to see the boys play with their new team. On Friday (14th) I finally decided to move myself up and to do something I had in mind for quite a long time... head to the forest and look for their inhabitants (fox, deer, badger...). Again, an early morning, got up at 4.45 A.M. and left around 5.20 A.M. after an express breakfast and loading the gear up into the car. I was very undecided whether I should take my camera or not as I considered this a first "recognition" trip to look for any clues confirming the presence of the animals... in other words look for animals poop. Just a quick snapshot from my smartphone app to illustrates the little trek I undertook on that day. By the way, you can get very easily lost in the forest, especially if you venture their at night and without any location gear. These days everyone has a smartphone with a GPS however I keep this as a backup plan and I prefer to rely on a dedicated gear, a Garmin Fenix5X watch with maps and GPS. Be sure to have all your gear fully power loaded before your trip (or bring a powerbank with you, always good as a backup). Anyway, I chose to bring my camera with me along with a pair of binoculars. I never got the chance to use it on that day. I did not see any big animals. A couple of little birds, I believe they were treecreepers and wrens but without a decent light, very difficult to shoot. No poops either :). It was a nice walk thought and allowed me to get a first impression of the area and ti where to explore further and potentially deploy some photographic traps. I did take a few pictures with my cellphone. Writing this blog made me realise how "correct" the image quality was on my phone and that, with a bit of post-treatment, you can actually get some "okay" pictures. Again, I'll let you judge. I did see some "wildlife" other than birds. Will you be able to spot it ? Don't cheat just look at the pictures one by one... Just to finish on that day, I also met a "lovely" slug. End of the trip. It was a bit frustrating not encountering any mammals but at least it was a good walk and it allowed me to get more familiar with the area and surroundings. On the 15th (Saturday), I decided to head to a more familiar place to set up a photographic trap. Photographic traps are commonly used by hunters to investigate what animals are about in a selected area. Instead of spending hours in a hide waiting for some animals to pop up, the trap has a motion sensor combined to a camera that can either film or take picture when the last one is activated by a movement. You can set the time period of the day you want the trap to be active (to save battery). Before deploying the trap I decided to have a look at the surroundings as I realised that the place had changed a lot and that an old path was again available. As I was wondering around, I stopped on a damselfly that was gently taking the pose and I decided to have a go at it as I don't usually do "macro" (I don't have any dedicated macro lens). Just for the record, one anatomical way to differenciate dragonfly from damselfly, is that the last one can't fold their wings along their body. Continuing my walk, I came across some interesting snails "event". Never encountered such thing before. Snails from the same species (I believe) all aggregated on the stems of specific plants. I also encountered a lot of singing birds which I assumed were mainly gold finches (later confirmed by a picture). I also spotted a couple of other birds among the finches. I believe they were sparrows but I'm not 100% convinced (I'm waiting for some advices from an ornithological forum). Then went the time to set up the trap. I decided to place it along some bushy area where we previously briefly observed a badger. Another factor that encouraged me to deploy the trap at that specific location was the presence of wild fruits (littles berries) that could be a potential food source for some animals.. Let's hope that the little guy will still be around. On the way back home I spotted a circling buzzard in the sky not to far from me so I decided to shoot it. That was the end of the wildlife trip. I just headed back home to get changed and drop off some of my gear, jumped back into the car to reach the "Halle aux Sports Nicole Abar" for some sport photography of the local handball team HBCC. Both Senior I and II team were playing on that day and offered a nice show. 07.09.18 - 09.09.18 - I moved away for a weekend a bit further north for the 30th B-Day celebration of Clementine. A great occasion to catch up with some old friends. Also a good opportunity to have a look at the regional species. Overall a very good weekeed mixing, nature, sport, drinking, friends and obviously photography. I was picked up by Marion and Fred nearby the motorway around 5 P.M. on the Friday and here we were stuck in the car for a good four and half hours driving to the "domaine de Jonchy" in "Saint Julien". We arrived around 10 P.M. meet up with our hosts (Jérôme and Clémentine) and with a couple of guests that were already arrived. After a brief dinner joined by some punch and beers, Fred and myself were invited to play a couple of games of "petanque" with the cousins and brother in law of Clementine. Three wins later, around 2 o'clock in the morning everyone decided that it was enough petanque (especially the losers...) and to go to bed... Nevertheless, I was not totally ready to crash as since we've got there I could believe how stunning the night was with a sky dotted with stars... I thought "let's have a go at something I'm really bad at"... astrophotography... We went to bed but not for a very long night as I decided to get up a bit earlier than the rest of the guests to visit a little "lake" that I have spotted on Google maps, hoping for some wildlife encounters. As my 150-600S lens has followed my "dear one" to the North of France, I had to use my backup lens, 70-200 2.8 coupled with x2 iii extender. I'm not unhappy with the result, the only negative point I find with this combination is a slower AF compared to when I use the 150-600. One positive point is that this setup is way lighter than with the "sigmazooka". Anyway, let's get back to our encounters of the day... To be fair I have not seen much. I was hoping more birds but the "lake" turned to be actually a small pond suffering from eutrophication, with large amounts of alga on its surface probably responsible for the lack of biodiversity. First encounter of the day was .... a red squirrel. It may not be so exciting but actually for the record, red squirrel populations have experienced a drop down since the american species also known as grey squirrel and categorised as an invasive species. Grey squirrel because of their higher tolerance to certain diseases and parasites tend to take over on red squirrels natural habitats. Second encounter of the day was a green woodpecker. It took me ages to realise what it was as the bloody idiot was standing in a tree just behind me but I had no way of seeing it (and neither did it) I could just hear him. After a good hour it finally decided moving to the tree just in front of me (about 6 meters from me) but impossible to see him as he stopped behind a large clump of leaves. It then moved further away from me and I finally managed to get a long range shot and to ID it. The first picture is just to get an idea of the distance, I reckon it was at a good 200 meters away from me. The two others are cropped pictures to identify it (obviously poor quality). Third encounter involved a little passerine that I'm still looking to identify (I'll update it when I'll know). Fourth encounter was a jay, surprisingly very shy bird I had to shoot it from a long range distance. For some people that might not be very exciting but we don't see them very often around the Carcassonne area. You have to head a bit further north or to the "foresty" area to find them. Last encounter of the day was a common buzzard. I have generally lost the motivation for taking pictures of bird of preys as they are hard to focus especially with a bright blue sky, and without a pendular gimbal and a tripod it becomes rapidly a tricky and heavy exercise. As this one was circling quite low I've adopted a new approach to take the shot without the tripod. I just laid down on the floor, on my back and just shot in that position when the bird was passing just above me. Not the best pictures I ever made but quite okay. I let you judge. I finally headed back to the domain to have a shower, meet up with the rest of the guests that had arrived and enjoy the celebration. On the following day, I decided to get up early and check if the red squirrel had some kind of daily routine and as expected, it did... Nothing very exciting for the rest of that morning. I took a couple of pictures of a chap doing some paragliding. Later during that day I also went back to that tree in the middle of the domain backyard,... I don't know why I just found it stunning and had another couple of shots at it (1 with my dslr, 2 with my smartphone). These were the last pictures of that long weekend.
31.08.2018 & 01.09.2018 - The boys and myself all gathered to the "Pantouquet", a beautiful domain lost in the "Montagne Noire", for an ultimate night before Christophe's (aka Titou) wedding. Under the supervision of Christian (aka the Godfather), and around a nice BBQ, a pool and a jacuzzi we've managed to keep our futur groom relaxed before the Big Day. Typical "boys night", while Christian (Don Christiano) was taking care of the fire for the BBQ, the rest of the team enjoyed a couple of glasses of Pastis accompanied by some "saucisson" and peanuts. Very "chillaxed" atmosphere !! While enjoying "life" we were joined by one of the domain guardians', Yago the Patou probably attracted by the smell of the grilling sausages. After a few strokes and realizing that he will not get any food from us he gently left. Our meaty dinner finished we all moved inside for a couple of pool games. After a quick dip into the jacuzzi and a gentle reminder by Don Christiano that we had a Big day coming up we all went to bed. On the next day after setting up all the tables for the wedding and another BBQ we all went to get ready for the ceremony. All the boys gathered in Titou's room and helped him getting ready for the wedding. Then, we all left for the ceremony...
We split and continue to explore the rest of the place that is huge but surprisingly does not offer much "catchy" subjects to shot. I just decide to shot as much as I can and to deal with the pictures later in post production considering it a double exercise. I go through the entire ground floor looking for anything of interest. I finally find what I was expecting in two contiguous rooms, graffitis !! One is a mixture of a large picture and some spray paint drawing and the other just pure spray painted. Very nice colours on both of them.
After those two shots and finishing exploring the ground floor, I decide to move up to the 1st floor to join Thierry and look for more findings. Not much on that part of the house with nothing exceptionnal... We therefore decide to explore the remaining bit of the house and head down to the "basement" to hopefully get to the swimming pool we'd heard about and could see from a broken window.
Very first picture in HDR and I'm quite happy with the result. Made out of 8 pictures with decreasing shutter speed and assembled on LightRoom. Once again, a wider angle lense would have been more appropriated to capture the entire scene. This was almost the end of the trip as we decided to move back to the main house and to give a final go at the ground floor before finally leaving the place. I finished that first Urbex session on that picture.
If you've enjoyed this article you can find all the pictures and others in the URBEX section of the portfolio. |
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