Another long period without posting anything here... It has been a pretty busy last couple of weeks with the French holiday period and still a lot to do before submitting the thesis, technically in a couple of days from now, TOUCH WOOD !! Most of the content of this article is in the title and it is pretty rich, so let's begin... First week of the holidays, we had two trips planned. First one was to go to a one man show held Saint Amand-les-eaux and featuring the great Bun Hay Mean aka Chinois Marrant. That was a great night, we left the theater with a massive jaw ache from laughing. The guy was great and the lad doing his first part (Donell Jacksman) was also terrific. We had a great time. Second trip, we headed to Belgium, more precisely to Ghent, to have a go at the World nof Tim Burton exhibition. Basically, the exhibition intended to sum up the entire carrier of Tim Burton, presenting some of his napkins drawings, private paintings, movies costumes, first films, etc. Sadly no pictures were allowed in the two main section of the exhibition :(. I still managed to take a couple of shots with my "smartphone", in the main hall (it was allowed there...). Overall feeling on the exhibition,... it was quick and not as impressive as I thought. I would have expected more costumes, more teasers from the movies, something a bit bigger. It was good but slightly disappointing. Day 1 at the Salon de la Photo...Next destination of the holidays, Paris, for an extended weekend at the Salon de la Photo 2018. After an early and quite long trip (Uber, Bus, Tube/Overground) we arrived to the Salon de la Photo at the "Porte de Versailles" which is a huge complex holding several events/exhibitions at the time. After a short queue and a bag check we finally got inside. The ground floor was mainly dedicated to present photography studios, photography schools, magazines who were very numerous. The first floor on the other hand was welcoming all the big brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony Sigma,...), photo accessories and a couple of stores (Camara, la Fnac,...). W headed straight to this one as I was suppose to meet with Bastien Juif at the Sigma stand. I introduced myself to Renaud Coilliot from Sigma (great guy ! very friendly and easygoing) which told me that I still had another 30 mins before my meeting so we decided to explore the surroundings and check the Canon stand. I also had a go at the world famous "Sigmazooka", the 200-500mm 2.8 with its x2 converter making it a 500-1000m 5.6 lens, fifteen kilos of happiness, impossible to take for a birding session but worth the try. Canon went big for the occasion with a very large exhibition area where you could actually test almost everything from printers to their largest telephoto lenses. They had a large stage for guests/canon ambassadors programmed to give several talks during the weekend. On the left side of the stage Canon had a large podium with a dancing lady in its center and all around the main body cameras of the brand to test on the dancer. Among them the new Canon R (hybrid), the 5D mark IV, the 6D mark II (see below). I've played around with all of them with different lenses and I was very impressed by the 6Dii as I pushed it up to 12800 and frankly the result was very impressive, much better than I was expecting. 5DIV obviously is a great piece of kit but to be honest for my usage I could probably do with the 6Dii. Obviously I have not tested it in the field but still. For the Canon R, i'm quite sceptical for the moment. I mean very good tracking and captor but still missing a bit for velocity on the shooting, 3 images per secs is still not enough for my personal usage. Obviously I can't make a comparison between the 3 cameras as they were available with different lenses and other visitors of the exhibition were urging for trying the cameras, so not great conditions. Back to the Sigma "kiosk" I finally met with Bastien. I hugely invite you to visit his website and to have a look at his pictures... they are stunning ! It was a great exchange, Bastien gave me a lot of advices on my pictures and also invited me to reach him to discuss further pictures or even to come along for a birding session (as we are both living in the same region). Bastien has recently released a great book (Passion Oiseaux) about birds illustrated with his own pictures. I suggest you to have a look at it. Following that exchange we wondered around for a while. I went back to Canon store to try further more gear and especially the big telephoto lenses, as they recently updated their 500 and 600mm and gosh... what an update !! I had the chance to compare and mount both 600mm II and III on a 7Dii and the weight difference between those two lense is humongous !! I can easily imagine taking bird and wildlife pictures without a stand or a tripod for a long period of time. To compare with my Sigma 150-600 Sport, the 600mm iii was way lighter !! Amazing piece of kit again !! The picture below was taken with a 6DmkII with the 600mm iii. Note the 1/100s shutter speed and the image is quite sharp, probably due to a great work of the lens stabilisation and also its light weight reducing the shaking. During the "Salon" we also had the chance to meet up with the great Nath-Sakura. She absolutely amazed us by her kindness but also by her live demonstrations. She performed live sessions in such a confined space with very little gear for terrific results. One of her session only involved a safety blanket as background, two light projectors with some color gel and the model. I'll show you the result of such setup in my next post as we tried to do something similar at home. Again, I encourage you to visit her website and to have a look on her recent photography and light manual. I have already bought it for two friends. Day 2 at the Salon de la Photo...Back at the "Salon" and today I get to meet with the great pair of wedding photographer, Damien Dohmen & Sylvain Gardères. One more time I invite you to check their website as their photo are stunning !!!
On that second day we also had the chance to meet up with one of my bestfriend that I had not seen in ages. After sharing the same classes at the University for at least three years, I moved to Sweden while she moved to a more artistic carrier. Now she does a lot of acting, web series and obviously photography. If you want to check a work feel free to check her webpage. Forgot to tell her name: Leslie Carles. <3 Day 3 and final encounter...We decided to stay an extra day especially because we wanted to have a bit more time to go through all the big brands. The main reason was that I was looking to may be swap my Canon 7Dii for a Full Frame body. So we want round Sony, Panasonic, Fuji,... I really enjoyed the Fuji XT-3, especially the way all the settings (ISO, shutter speed,...) are readily available on the camera body. Also the AF was mad !!! Really enjoyed it... Unfortunately they don't do big telephoto lenses for that one and it would not be adapted for wildlife photo but for any other type of shooting it would be my first choice. I also tried the Sony A3R, and I add a lot of expectation from that body (it was my main choice as a replacement for my 7D) but I ended up quite disappointed... Mainly the controls are not easy when coming from Canon, also the price of the lenses is crazy expensive. I reckon the quality is there, speaking of the image, but the robustness,... well it felt a bit fragile and I would not feel confident taking it around on outdoor trips like I do with my 7D. At the end of the day I decided to save my money and to wait to see what's coming next with Canon as rumors indicate that they will probably release a new FF Hybrid body next year... If I could get a could Canon R+ with 10 images/sec and a high iso range that would be perfect. Let's wait and see... I'm also craving for a new telephoto lens,... not sure which one between the 600mm F4 iii, the 400mm F2.8 iii or the excellent 200-400 F4. On a different note, we also stay that extra day because we wanted to listen to the talk from Jérémie Villet. He is a very young successful wildlife photographer mainly focusing on snowy sceneries and animals. He is very friendly guy, with a "flower power" touch and his work is stunning. Have a look to his work on his instagram page.
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Lot of work again as the thesis submission is finally approaching,... "Intention to submit" form has been filled in and planned for end of November,... Does not feel real, except for the stress that is building up gradually. Good thing, I'm compensating the rising stress level by doing sport and photography and even better sport-photography. Also I've done two little projects using flash lights to improve my lighting skills (still a lot to do...) Not much to present today. As mentioned just above, the last two weeks have been pretty thesis orientated. It was also holiday period in France, so no much handball... Nevertheless, I still had the chance to shoot two handball games from the Melantois Handball Club main team. It also gave me time to do more "photoshopping" as I took the occasion to produce several adverts and posters for the club from the picture I took from the game.
On that first series of post-treated pictures, I decided to keep the orange coloring. To be a 100% honest, I did not put too much efforts in trying to cancel it. During that kind of game I usually end up with roughly 300 - 400 pictures. Even if you can automatise the post-treatment process on LightRoom and synchronised the settings for all the pictures (that's why it is useful to shoot in Manuel Mode and to keep roughly the same settings for the entire event), I still like to review every single picture one by one. That allows me to discard the blurry ones but also to resize and crop on the best part of some of them. At the end I generally end up with 200/250 pictures. The second game was of better quality, more interesting as the Melantois players were facing the USDK (Dunkerque) a big club in France. It was also very exciting as a very special guest was playing for Dunkerque on that day: Guillaume Joli, famous french international player, three times World champion, two times European champion and once Olympic champion with France. Anyway, brilliant game and obviously an honor to get a chance to exchange few words with Guillaume Joli and take a couple of pictures of him. As mentioned above, I also dealt with advertising the future games for the club and I spent a bit of time working on Photoshop. Below is one of the banners I made for the Dunkerque game. Other events and banners can be found on the Instagram and Facebook of the Melantois Handball Club.
Nath-Sakura has also launched an Instagram contest (deadline is 8th of December if you want to give it go) with three different categories - "Souvenirs d'enfance" (Childhood memories), "Noir & Blanc" (Black & White) and "Photos de vacances" (Holiday memories). I have also decided to participate to this one and this is what led us to the second project I undertook over the holidays (even if I'm not technically on holiday). I picked the "Souvenirs d'enfance" category and I wanted something involving a grown up girl and plush toy. Also from a recent picture that I found on one of the group which I am a member of, I wanted to include some astrophotography bit, ideally the Milky Way. After few minutes of brainstorming with my partner in crime, I decided that a great location for this would be the "Mare à goriaux", a spot we visited before for some wildlife photography two winters ago. Of course, this kind of shooting needs a bit of preparation as obviously you need some good weather conditions but also the adapted photographic equipment and accessories but also to think of what you want your picture to look like, sometimes like learnt from Karl Taylor, a good drawing can be really helpful. The idea is to take an initial shot of the sky and then a second picture of the main subject and to superimpose them on Photoshop. The actual final picture required two nights of shooting. The first night was great, no wind, no cloud cover, only stars (and the light pollution from the neighbouring cities but it was okay). The only problem, as you can see on the map just above, the place is surrounded by forest which obviously we had to go through before reaching the water bit and the pontoon where I wanted to take the picture. Bringing a fearful lady through a dark forest at night is not such a great idea if you are planning to take your time shooting stars, which obviously requires to turn off any single light and lamps during the multiple shots. Basically we had to speed up the session. With all that haste to get back to the car and home safe, I made a bloody mistake when taking the second shot. For an astrophotography shot, basically you switch your Autofocus to Manual focus and focus on the "infinite" value, increase your ISO above 2000, open up your aperture to the maximum and choose a slow shutter speed. I did all those things and obtained a satisfying shot of the sky but unfortunately urged by "scared" assistant I totally forgot switching back the autofocus while taking picture of her for the second photo. Dumb as f***... From Left to Right, the three different pictures that were necessary to create the final fourth one (three not two because the ballon moved with the wind in the second picture so I took the ballon from the third one and superimposed it). As you can see, the main subject is a bit blurry because I left the focus on Manual for this shot. I tried to reduce the blur on LR but it did not come up great. Therefore we decided to head for a second trial two days later. This session was shorter than the previous one. Someone who I won't tell the name unfortunately did not hold tight enough to the ballon which obviously took it chance and flew away from us... Luckily I managed to take enough shots of the main subject to be able to create a less blurry picture. As I could set the camera, tripod and everything exactly the same away as the first time I also had to play around on the size of the picture to be able to have it perfectly matching the background from the first session. Again from Left to Right the three different pictures that allowed the production of picture four and five (plus a little post-treatment on LightRoom). I'm quite satisfied with the result even if I call this DYI photography, I think I'm in the "Souvenirs d'enfance" (Childhood memories) theme.
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