New faces

27Jan09

Just installed the new iLife ‘09, and iWork ‘09, as well as upgrading my laptop to 10.5.6. All went pretty smoothly, apart from the new version of Mail, which seems to have crapped out, and doesn’t display any mail at all, old or new. I’ve resorted to Thunderbird.
iPhoto ‘09 is the pick of the bunch. [...]

Filed under: Apple, Technology, photography   |  1 Comment
Tags: ilife '09, imovie, iphoto, iwork '09, leopard, software

Full-frame or bust

06Jan09

Instead of buying myself a new digital SLR, as I’d been thinking of doing for a long time, I bought my wife an ultra-compact, a Canon Ixus 80 IS, which is a nice little thing, very well put together. It does 8 megapixels and has a 3x zoom; more importantly, it is pocket-sized. It has [...]

Filed under: Technology, available light, low-light, photography   |  6 Comments
Tags: canon, nikon, olympus, slr

Le Grand Large

27Jun08

Another of my holiday snaps that had a wonky horizon. Annoyingly, my wife has taken it upon herself to order a load of prints via iPhoto, including many wonky horizons that I hadn’t got around to correcting yet.
This was taken near sunset (obviously) from the top of the dune in Barbatre, Noirmoutier.

Filed under: Colour, Landscape, photography   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: barbatre, France, noirmoutier, sunset, vendee

Free the Amstel Free

13Jun08

While you can now get Cobra Alcohol-Free beer quite easily in supermarkets in this country, the nation’s pubs are hamstrung by a bewildering attachment to no-alco beers from the bad old days like [makes signs of the cross] Kaliber and Clausthauler and Bitberger (pronounced Shitberger: fact). I get that sinking feeling as I scan behind [...]

Filed under: Colour, available light, low-light, no flash, photography   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Amstel, Amstel free, beer, France, noirmoutier, non-alcoholic, vendee

Walking on Water

12Jun08

All kids go through a phase during which they make faces at the camera. Rather than what you might consider a natural smile, you get various sorts of grimace, none of which is made more flattering by the in-flux nature of teeth.
Ironically, by the time the teeth are sorted, the hormones have kicked in, and [...]

Filed under: Candid, Colour, photography   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: barbatre, beach, France, noirmoutier, sea, vendee

Play Misty for Me

11Jun08

I took about 500 or so photos on holiday (I like to add them up and think in terms of how many rolls of film it would have been, and how much it would cost to develop them the analogue way), but they were mostly snapshots of course, holiday snaps, taken in large quantities in [...]

Filed under: Colour, Landscape, low-light, photography   |  3 Comments
Tags: dawn, France, loire-atlantique, marais, mist, vendee

Dark Skies

11Jun08

Sometimes I upload a photo just to see what colour background the Monotone theme will give it.
This picture is all about microclimate: you can see the dark clouds behind, which was what the weather was like on mainland France. Meanwhile, on our side of the island, we were able to spend most of the day [...]

Filed under: Colour, photography   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: France, microclimate, noirmoutier, vendee

French Cuisine

07Jun08

I love French women – I married one – and there other aspects of French culture I love. For example, I admire the way that French people will happily sit on shitty plastic garden furniture to eat al fresco. After all, it’s the being outside and the eating and the company that matters in all [...]

Filed under: Colour, photography   |  2 Comments
Tags: cuisine, food, France, noirmoutier, restaurant

Turbo

06Jun08

This windfarm near Beauvoir-sur-Mer, on the way to Noirmoutier via the gois, was signposted as a parc éoliennes, which seems a much nicer term than wind farm. You could drive right up to them, park up and see how bloody huge they are, and listen to the noise they make.
Some people object to them on [...]

Filed under: Colour, Landscape, photography   |  2 Comments
Tags: éolienne, energy, France, turbine, vendee, wind

Headache Weather

03Jun08

I like the sunset mode on my camera (though JPEG compression in the WordPress Cruncher is killing the colours here), but every time I use it to take some serious sunset action, I wake up with a really bad headache.
Clearly, the advice about not looking at the sun, even when it’s big ‘n’ orange, is [...]

Filed under: Colour, Landscape, low-light, photography   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: barbatre, France, noirmoutier, sunset, vendee