Friday, January 31, 2014

Project 365 - Day 23

I'm taking the opportunity that it's cold to make "cold" pictures. Winter can really draw nice patterns on water and glass. I saw this on a window and tried to capture it to make a nice abstract shot. These patterns always amaze me and my daughter is always angry when we scratch them to see through the windows, she finds these really beautiful....

Project 365 - Day 22

Looks like winter is finally taking its quarters here in Belgium. The car was totally frozen a morning. As the sky was blue trhat day, it gaves a nicely blue tint to my car. I went for a close-up shot, very minimalistic and almost abstract of the bodywork of the car and a part of a window. The more I look at it, the more I find it looking like a very big close-up of an insect eye.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Project 365 - Day 21

This is another abstract shot. I was experimenting with a thing called zoom close-up, which I bought on a flea market. This little optic piece has to be screwed on the lens, and allow you to get in focus at 10cm of your subject. This has nothing to do with macro, because if you use it with a wide angle lens, you'll still get the wide angle effect but you can get as close as 10cm of your subject. It gives a lot of creative opportunities. Another effect of this thing is that it soften a little the shots you do with it. I used it with my 50mm 1.4 lens wide open for this shot. The things that looks like bubbles are in fact holes. The iron surface is lit by the daylignt coming through a window, and the orange colour in the holes comes from a lamp that was lit above it. I really like how these holes look like small bubbles !

Monday, January 27, 2014

Project 365 - Day 20

Sometimes, I really have bad ideas. Let me tell about this one: I wanted to take a picture while driving my car. Not that I particularly wanted to do that, but I wanted to get a shoot from a car that was travelling. The problem is that I was alone so I was the driver. A very bad idea and I don't recommend you to do that. Fortunately for ma, I didn't had an accident. My goal was to try to capture the movement of the car while having the car in front of me sharp. I tried several times, but wasn't satisfied by the result, it's quite difficult, to keep the camera still while focusing on the car in front of me and keeping the same speed as it, all this while driving ! Finally, I tried to shot perpendicularly through my window instead of the windscreen, and this picture is the result ! Not so bad after all... ;-)

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Project 365 - Day 19

Sometimes when you wake up, you get a nice surprise. For Day 19 of my 365 project, I had this great surprise. I looked outside by my window and saw a wonderful dawn. In the back of my garden, I can see an electric pillar. Lots of people think it's a pity I've got one of these just behind my garden, but personally, I like them. I think they're very graphic. I guess it's just a question of point of view. Anyway, I tried to get an interesting composition using the shape of the pillar and the colours of ths sky.

Project 365 - Day 18

Another cat shot. This time it's my good old Deli. She's a really lovely cat, we found her in the street while she was still a kitten about ten years ago. She was seating on the back of my chair looking by the window. I begin to think that cats are an interesting subject for photography...

Friday, January 24, 2014

Project 365 - Day 17

Winter seems to finally come to Belgium. The ground was frozen this morning. I went in my garden and tried to capture the frozen grass in the morning sun. I found a small red leaf that I took as the main subject. I found it interesting to have both a contrast between the sun and the frozen grass as well as having a contrast of colours between the red of the lonely tree leaf and the green of the grass.

For those interested, I've added new sets of pictures on my urbex photography website.

Project 365 - Day 16

I'm really beginning to like taking abstract shots of things. It gives a lot of opportunity to try different things. So here's another "abstract" picture. I took this one because I liked the repetition of the circular pattern. Geometric shapes can be really inspiring !

Project 365 - Day 15

Early in the morning, I was looking by the window. There was mist outside, and I thought it was looking nice with the lights. I was a little lazy and didn't took my tripod and tried to take a picture. All my shots were blurry, so I decided to make a voluntary long exposure shot that would look abstract. I took this shot with a speed of about 2 seconds, and as soon as I pushed the trigger, I moved my camera, getting nice trails of light.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Project 365 - Day 14

This shot was taken the same day as the previous one in the playground in the woods. I know, you'll say I'm cheating, but as I said in my previous post, I've been very sick, and my daughter too, which is noticeable at her face. I chose to go for the square format, because I thought it coiuld work well with the three 'stripes'.

Project 365 - Day 13

I've been really sick these past days, so it was hard for me to follow my 365 project. Anyway, here's the picture of day 13. I went on walk in the woods with my daughters and found a playground. I wanted to capture the movement of my daughter sliding on a toboggan, but unfortunately, I hadn't my tripod with me, so I took this shot with the slower speed I could do hand held. I'm still wondering if this could be considered as a street photography picture or if it should be considered as a portrait...

Friday, January 17, 2014

Project 365 -Day 12

Another try at black and white photography. This time it is a human part shot, most specifically the hands, as you have noticed, of my daughter Eva (which I posted a portrait earlier in my 365 project). I'm quite glad how it turned out. She's often looking at her little hands, and I think the position of her hands is quite expressive here. I chose to turn this one in black and white mostly because of the noise on the pictures. I took it with my old Nikon D3000 which doesn't really handle well high iso. It's also a good exercice for me to practice black and white because I'm a colour lover and I seldom do that.

Project 365 - Day 11

You see me posting pictures of cat and I know you're afraid. You're thinking "Oh no, he won't begin posting pictures of cats like 90% of the blogs out there !". Don't worry, I won't ! ;-) I just didn't knew what to shoot this day, and we've got this little chap at home that for once was quiet, so I thought I could give a try at having a nice picture of him.

I know I'm a bit late at posting pictures for my 365 project, but yesterday I couldn't take any pictures because of a bad news that happened to us and I've been quite busy yesterday. This means I'll have to take two pictures today ! I'll also try to post them today, but I'm not sure I'll have time to do it...

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Project 365 - Day 10

I've taken this picture while I was waiting for my wife at the station. It's been raining all the day and I was sitting in the car. I had been on an urbex trip all day long and I was quite tired. While I was wondering what I would shot for my today's picture, I looked at  the rain sliding on the windscreen of the car. I had my camera on the rear seats. I grabbed it, and took this shot.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Project 365 - Day 9

And the picture of today ! One of the first time I try myself at abstract shots. I don't have much to say about it, and I won't tell you what it is, so you can let your imagination runs free... ;-)

Project 365 - Day 8

So, here's the picture of yesterday. I took it while on a little urbex trip to an abandoned train station in Belgium. A more usual style picture for me as some of you may notice. I like how the sky looked dramatic at that time of the day and added a lot to the atmosphere of the scene. There wasn't much to see as this was a really small train station of a small town, but nonetheless, the perspective of the cables and the road were nice and gave the possibility to make an interesting picture.

Project 365 - Day 7

I didn't had time this week-end to post the pictures for my project 365, so here's the one that I take on saturday. I went to see a friend and he showed me the terrain he had bought: a small wood with a pond in the middle of it. I had my old Nikon D3000 with only the 50mm 1.4 argentic lens mounted on it. I took this picture of the trees reflecting on the still water.

Friday, January 10, 2014

Project 365 - Day 6

The picture of today is a portrait of my youngest daughter. She's not an easy one to capture, because she's full of energy and moves everywhere. I've been taking quite a few shots of her, and suddenly she stood still and looked at me. This is the best picture of the serie, and as I want to practice portrait, I chose this image as the picture of the day.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Project 365 - Day 5

Today was a really tough day for my 365 project. I've spent the morning doing urbex in an abandoned train station. The weather was really hostile: little rain and heavy wind blowing. While returning home, I wanted to take a picture of a paper factory along a canal as my picture of the day. The reason I wanted to take this shot is that I wanted to make a long exposure of the factory with heavy clouds above it. I had brought my ND filter with me so I could go for a 30 seconds shot, capturing the clouds as they were moving. When I arrived there, along the canal, the wind was really  really violent. I put my camera on the tripod and tried to get that long exposure shot, but the wind was blowing so strong that even on the tripod, the camera was slightly moving, making all my pictures blurry and unusable.

Back at home, I was wondering what I could shot as my picture of th day, and I saw my desk lamp lighting the wall. I thought it could make an interesting grahic composition. And now, that's the picture you're looking at today. I really like how the 365 project makes you look at the surrounding world to find pictures !

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Project 365 - Day 4

There's an old chapel in the wood not far from where I live. I never had the chance to go look at it, but today I decided that it would be a good opportunity for my photographic 365 days project to go check it out. The chapel is very nice and has been built in 1740 if I believe the date written on it. Unfortunately for me, it was closed and by a big wooden door. I was very impressed by the big lock on the door and took it as the subject of my today's picture.

For those more interested about my urbex pictures, I've added a new gallery on my website about an abandoned veterinary school also known as "Horror labs". You can see it on my photography website.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Project 365 - Day 3

Well, here's my picture for today. A house is being built next to mine, so I took the opportunity to shoot the crane from my garden. The sun was setting down, so the sky's quite dark but it's not the night yet. I tried to use the crane as a geometric divider for my picture.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Project 365 - Day 2

 Here's my second picture of my project 365. It's another minimal/abstract shot, this time taken in my bathroom. I'm not so happy with it, though I think there's some idea in it, but that's the best shot I took today... Anyway, it gaves me the opportunity to play with the square format, which is a really hard format to use I think. Don't hesitate to leave some comments to tell me what you think about it !

Project 365 - Day 1

So, as the new year begins, I've decided to jump on the train of the project 365. I can hear you wondering what's this all about. It's simple: the goal of the exercice is to take one picture a day during 365 days. Some people take a theme for their project, and some don't. In my case, I won't take any specific theme, my objective is to practice photography in domains I'm not familiar with. But don't worry, I'll still post pictures of urban explorations... ;-)

Well, here's my first picture (taken yesterday, so I may post a second one today). It's been taken in a museum in Brussels, I was trying to get a minimalist/abstract shot. I also put this picture in black and white, which I find is really difficult to achieve, I mean a real beautiful black and white, not just a desaturated picture.

For those interested, my urban exploration pictures are still available on my photography website.