Harold Davis's Blog, page 133

Another Stage Set and Some Signage

Courtesy of my iPhone, here is another stage set maquette and also some Parisian signage.

Stage Set Two © Harold Davis

Attention! © Harold Davis

Say Cheese © Harold Davis

Defense d’uriner © Harold Davis

Opera Garnier Stairs

It was fun to photograph again today in the crazily ornate Opera Garnier. This one is nine exposures using a fisheye lens. Since no tripods are allowed, I very carefully placed the camera on a ledge. I used auto-bracket mode and a remote trigger to fire nine exposures separated by one f-stop each. The bracketed sequence was combined using Nik HDR Efex Pro.

Opera Garnier Stairs © Harold Davis

Stage Set

This is an iPhone photo of a maquette of a stage set at the Opera Garnier in Paris, processed on my iPhone using Plastic Bullet, Mextures, and Lo-Mob.

Stage Set © Harold Davis

Sailboats in the Luxembourg Gardens

Yesterday was Sunday and May Day, and the first warm sunny day in a while here in Paris. The crowds turned out in the Luxembourg Gardens, with singing and partying. It was altogether a gentle and fun scene. In the boat pond children played with the sailboats ignoring the brisk wind, helped by their parents who used special sticks to turn the ships around when they reached the further shore. There were still kids and parents playing with ships in the water late in the afternoon as the light turned golden, when I snapped this photo.

Sailboats in the Luxembourg Gardens © Harold Davis

Saint-Sulpice

Our hotel in Paris is around the corner from Saint-Sulpice, a church made famous in the otherwise pretty silly book, The Da Vinci Code. The soaring interior spaces of this edifice are beyond belief. I’ve shown the cross made by the cruciform architecture, with the long nave crossed by the transept. The famous Saint-Sulpice organ can be seen at the bottom of the image. I used a hand-held fisheye lens to make this image.

Saint-Sulpice © Harold Davis

Cliffs of the River Lot

I am sitting in the Gare Matabiau in Toulouse, France waiting for the train to Paris. The bench with plugs for my electronics beckoned, and I work in the modern station on my laptop, dreaming of the cliffs of the River Lot and the trail beside the river.

Cliffs of the River Lot © Harold Davis

Chemin de Halage

Under the cliffs beside the Lot River, and below the picturesque medieval village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, the Chemin de Halage makes for spectacular walking, and is part of one of the French feeder routes to the pilgrimage trail of Camino de Santiago, better known for the routes to the southwest on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.

Today we wandered this path with our cameras amid intermittent sunshine and rain squalls.

Chemin de Halage © Harold Davis

The cliffside path is shown above in a fisheye view, with the Lot River framed by the stone of the trail. I’ve also added below an impressionistic version of the cliffs and Lot River created using my iPhone.

Along the Lot River © Harold Davis

Recent iPhone Sketches in France

Here are some recent iPhone images from southwestern France I made today and yesterday, and processed on the fly on my iPhone while traveling on the bus. With the first image, I was walking around the wonderful historic village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. When I saw the white dog, I got down on the ground at his eye level, and made a portrait with the village in the background. It was processed using Lo-Mob.

White dog in an old town © Harold Davis

The next image is in the little square next to our guide Francis’s home, just outside Chateau Biron. I processed it using Waterlogue.

Faubourg Chateau Biron © Harold Davis

Finally, the statue shown in this image is outside the church adjacent to the central square of the bastide town of Montpazier. I processed the image using Plastic Bullet and Lo-Mob.

Christ in Montpazier © Harold Davis

Lot River Valley

Today we walked to the small town of Calvignac, France perched on a rocky crag, and about 3 kilometers from the Mas de Garrigue. The weather threatened rain, and was misting when we set out. But along the way the clouds opened up, the threatened rain never arrived, and from the ledges in Calvignac there were glorious views across the valley and the bends in the Lot River.

Lot River Valley © Harold Davis

This is a seven exposure blend shot on a tripod using the Zeiss 35mm f/1.4. Each exposure was shot at f/6.3 and ISO 100, with shutter speeds between 1/40 of a second (for the dark trees in the foreground) and 1/2,500 of a second (for the bright clouds in the sky).

I used the image as a black and white demo for the group, first processing the seven exposures using Nik HDR Efex Pro. Next, I tweaked the color version. Finally, I converted to black and white using a layer stack, layers, masking, and a number of different conversion filters and presets.

Carcassonne at Night

Coming back to my base in Carcassonne after a long day of exploring Cathar castles—more on this later—I took my gear out on the old bridge after dark. Photographing back at the the old city of Carcassonne, the well-lit ramparts contrast in a visually odd way with the modern buildings and pollarded trees below the fortifications.

Carcassonne at Night © Harold Davis