A tourist in Paris

Last 2009 pictures

These are the last pictures I took during this year 2009. Céline was on duty this New Year's Eve so I deceided to spend most of my time hanging around Paris like a foreign tourist. So I started from the Trocadéro, then to the Eiffel Tower of the monument I photographed he most in 2009. After that, I followed the Champs de Mars to the Invalides where Napoleon's tomb can be seen. I took the Alexandre III bridge (the most beautiful in Paris) to reach the Concorde place, headed toward the Louvre museum through the Tuileries Park, to finally end on the Cité island shoting the Notre Dame cathedral.

Celebrating Christmas

With our godfamilies

We are now used to celebrate Christmas with Céline family on Christmas Eve. As a result, we were at l'Etang Sec on December 24^th evening to have diner with everyone, including Youdaline. As usual, the diner was excellent with great apetizers home made by Magali which are always a success, followed by foie gras, cailles and mashed potatoes ending with the buche. Everyone gave his presents to the others and we spent a great christmas eve.

Christmas Eve was followed by a lunch at Florence's brother place in Beynes with Céline extended family with her uncle, ant, cousins, ... We also had a great time, were given very nce presents. The lunch was excellent with delicious foie gras and salmon. Bunthai cooked the meal : a saraman and then the buches, because there were tree of them ! We had the opportunity to take several pictures of everyone and for some of them, they are really good ! Hope you enjoy them.

Les Champs Elysees

By Night

We were supposed to go to the cinema to see Avatar but we arrived too late and the show was already full. After that we decided that it was a good opportunity to go Paris by night and have a walk on the Champs Elysees were there is also a Christmas market. After we parked the car, we walk one hour long to see the multiple stand were you could find so many things that some some of them are far related from Christmas. Who cares ! We had a great time, took nice pictures and went to see Avatar on December 26^th.

Sparkling Christmas Tree

Finally

We were not very on that this year. We made our 2009 Christmas Tree like five days before Christmas, and we might not be able to enjoy a lot the fact that it is enlightening out livingroom. But it is our last Christmas for only the two of us, we made some rles about Christmas.First, the last week end of November, we bought the Kinder Adent calendar. We completely missed it this year, therefore, we do not have any Advent calendar. Then, the first week end of December we make our Christmas Tree and enjoyed it for almost three weeks, and not five days like this year !!

Thanks to this shooting, I added a new HDR picture. Go

Busy working day

Saying Goodbyes

Last Friday was for most of my colleagues and I the last lunch we were to have together before anyone leave for Christmas holidays. As a result, we decided to get something special and after some troubles finding place for 15 people, we ended accross the Seine river in a pizzeria. We enjoyed a very nice lunch all together and had a great time.

After lunch, as eeryone was so eager to get back to work after leaving the restaurant at 3pm, we thought it was better to go back home. As I was on holidays (finally) I wanted to go to Paris and take some picture of the Eiffel Tower. It turned out that Nicolas and Thomas got into my car and we went to Paris all three together. Once arrived, Nico left us and Thomas and I spent almost an hour taking pictures, (mostly me) and then left as the weather was reezing cold.

Labrats

For a good cause

On december 25^th, we are to celebrate Christmas with Céline extended family at lunch. It was decided that her parents were cooking the meal and in order to cook something good and not to arrive with a digusting meal, Bunthai tried his new recipe and invited us to taste it. We are always good to go for a taste and it was an opportunity for to test my new lens. You can now find the nice pictures I took during this session.

New Lenses

Fixed Focals

When we bought our last lens (Canon 28-300mm 3.5-5.6 L IS USM) I thought that we would never need again another lens as it covers a huge focal range. Indeed, this lens is very usefull when we are on holidays in order to avoid changing lenses everytime and get dust on the lens or sensor. The big drawback is that the lens is huge and heavy. As a result, it is not very easy to use it when we are just between friends having diner, or going out in Paris. Moreover, as it is a transstandard, it is not a very bright lens (f3.5 at 28mm and f5.6 at 300mm). So when it comes to pictures inside during birthday diner with low light, even if the lens is stabilized, we need to raise ISO and hope that people are not moving to fast so that the picture is not too blurred.

Therefore, I came to the conclusion that we needed a brighter lens that we could use inside with low light especially when Christmas is comming and that we are to celebrate it several times with our families. And if you know a little bit about photography, fixed focallenses are the brightest on the market especially because there is no zoom. And I red that the Canon 50mm 1.8 II was one of the best because for about 100euros you could have a great lens. I bought it, and indeed, you can take very nice pictures outiside when there is light and we you can close to f11 with low ISO. On the other hand, I tried to use it inside with low light and it is quite hard to take nice pictures, here is why : to get nice pictures, you need to freeze the action and have a very quick exposure time. In order to get it, you need to let a lot of light enters the lens and you do it by raising the ISO very high (from 800 to 1600) and/or by opening the diaphragm (up to f1.8 with this lens). But at f1.8, the depth of field is very short and most of the time, you think the picture is sharp but once on the computer you see that only the nose is sharp but not the rest of the face !

So I bought another lens, a Luxury one. The Canon 100mm 2.8 L IS USM Macro, with you can use either to do portraits (like the 50mm) but also to make macrophotography. The big difference with the 500mm is the price of course, but also the fact that the lens is stabilized wich allow to reduced the shutter speed. The result is just amazing and the lens is perfect for portraits in low light wich is going to be the case during Chistmas Celebrations.

Happy married life

To Alice and Frederic

We spent the week end outside France as we were invite to join and share Alice and Frederic's happiness through their wedding in Belgium close to Bastogne, well known city for those who like cyclism with the Liege-Bastogne-liege race. Unfortunately, the weather was very bad all week end long and very cold. The civil and religious ceremonies took place in Fauvilliers, whereas the cocktail, the diner and the party took place in Le Clos Marine, a restaurant in Bizory.

Like several other people, we were staying in the house of the buffalos which is a very nice cottage where you can fit quite a lot of people. Table-football and snooker were available during our stay and the bride's parents took care of us especially by dealing with the breakfast. We had a good time and we hope that the newly wedds also enjoyed the day.

Nice Iron Lady

Eiffel Tower of course !

As you may or may not know, this year is very special in Paris as the Eiffel Tower celebrates her 120th birthday. As a result, there are a lots of celebrations regarding this event. On Bastille Day, the fireworks were as usual shot from the Eiffel Tower but there also were pictures of the Eiffel Tower through out history regarding how Paris growed around its most famous symbol.

And to end this very special year, the city hall decided that : after the sparkling illuminations that occure every hour at night, there will be more illuminations. Indeed, I was there at 10pm yesterday evening and I saw it, but not entirely. I witnessed the spakling illumnations and then there is I think a 15 minutes illuminations every day until December 31^st.

Busy Week End

Christmas is coming ...

It is the same thing every year, when November has started, Céline is wondering when we would be able to go and see the crhistmas shopwindows of the Grands Magasin, boulevard Haussman, in Paris. Last year and the year before were great because we saw them almost alone as the timing was perfect. This year we were with a friend couple and we were astonished to see that at 10.30pm a saturday night, there were still a lot of chirldren out with their parents. Moreover, the shopwindows were not as childish as they used to be. You would find teddy in champagne, cooking jewlery, not quite the thing you would raise your kid with. Anyway, we had some good time and enjoyed the night.

Sunday midday was the opportunity for us to have lunch with Céline family. We had a dellicious cambodian peanut beaf with rice and a soup and a tasty lemon chocolate pie made by Magali for desert. We also brought a pineapple we bought at the market to use our brand new pineapple slicer we were given a couple of weeks ago. it was a great week end.

Happy Birthday

Sylvie, Marion, Rany et Pierre

Il s'agit bien de la deuxième salve d'anniversaires du cô:té de ma belle famille. En effet, la première se situe aux alentours de Mai avec notamment trois personnes du 11 mai, une du 3, une fin mars, une mi février. Mais hier soir nous fêtions quatres anniversaires s'étalant sur Octobre et Novembre.

2 new categories

About pictures

I just created two new categories about pictures. The first one is about HDR pictures. It is a technic combining several pictures taken with miscellaneous explosition to obtain one picture properly exposed and unexpected to the human eye.

The second category will just show you the best pictures we took during our several trips, week end or event we attended to.

A week in Rome

Really worth it !

Rome was a destination we had always wanted to go to. And as we were telling every one that we finally found the time to go, they were all telling us that this city is gorgeous. Small enough to make everything by foot, amazing how you face antiquities at every conrenr of the city, a great cuisine, a wonderful weather .... We had to see it for ourself !

And we definitly were not disappointed. Our hotle was closed to the city center and we indeed did everything by foot, we saw so many things, starting from antiquities to paintings and sculptures, and we enjoyed all our meals ... just a great week we spent together and we are looking forward to going back.