lundi 29 novembre 2010

Two days off...

Two days off. Two days without thinking of work. Two days without any stress. Two days in another place, not the one you use to live, eat, sleep and work everyday. Two days with some good friends and good food. Two days in the French countryside, far from everything. Two days off!

Yes, it was fu****g cool. But unfortunatly, I was unable to leave without my camera! Is photography a drug? Maybe...

When you are a freelance (photographer, designer, etc.), it's always hard to tell you that you can go far away without thinking that you do something wrong, that you should be available to work after an urgency call from a client. You could miss a lot of things in two days. But you could miss nothing. How to guess? I have no answer.

Anyway, on friday afternoon, I finally decided to leave with some good friends in one of my friends' house, close to Chauvigny (Vienne), 3 hours drive south/west from Paris. A week-end of rest, good food, nature, and a bit of sport (we brought 3 mountain bikes and 2 mx bikes). The forecast was bad with a lot of rain. But what? Are we made with sugar?! I didn't take a lot of photos, but on saturday night, I absolutely wanted to go for a walk to capture the 2 nuclear reactors of Civaux. Nuclear power is the primary source of electricity in France. In 2004, the country's nuclear production of electricity was about 78,8% (425,8 TWh - Wikipedia). Civaux's Nuclear Power Plant has more than 800 employees and each reactor has an output power of 1500 MWe, one of the highest class in the world. The steam from reactors gives a strange atmosphere to the sky, even by night.

Civaux's Nuclear Power Plant and its steam by night

lundi 22 novembre 2010

Eclectic week

Last week, I covered several events in Paris. And, as often, I run to an event from another one, so that I feel like a chameleon who can change his color when he goes to a different place and meet different people. Diversity is exactly what I like when you are a photographer. You learn new things each time you shoot a new subject. I could talk about that during hours and hours. It's a big part of motivation for me and I think I could resume it with one word : curiousity.

vendredi 5 novembre 2010

The snow is coming!

It's november and I know some people are already on their skis or snowboard riding the very first snow in the French Alps. I'm still in Paris and wish I could already ride my skis... So, it's a bit hard to wait, this is why I was just looking at my first ski pictures I did last season and there is one I absolutely want to share.

After my very first ski photo experience shooting the X-Games in Tignes (it couldn't be better for a first experience, isn't it?), I had to go in Chatel with some friends to try to capture some good action shots for a new ski brand (B2R - Born To Ride). Unfortunatly the snow was really hard everywhere, not easy to make a freeride shot in the powder if you don't have any powder! We finally saw a little heap of fresh snow with Hugo and I asked him if he could try to do a big turn on it. Not an easy task for him considering he had no speed and not a lot of fresh snow... But we did it and were really happy of the shot, except it's not a good one for the brand!

Rider : Hugo Cogez // Skis : Born To Ride // Location : Chatel, France
Shot with a Canon 7D // ISO 100 @ 1/400 and  f13 // 10/22mm lens // 580 EXII triggered by Mini TT1 and Plus II Pocket Wizard