35mmfrog

Ready to Charge

September 2011 – UK, London

This is in front of the tower of London… there are actually 3 lions, but I prefered that shot that only shows the 2 that are about to hunt…

Pigeon House

April 2011 – UK, London

As I came out of the tube the first thing I noticed were those birds which seemed to be right at home on those letters. It was in fact a difficult shot to make it look interesting… because it is a bridge and there are lot of lines made by its pillars, its roof, the shops around, etc… It is difficult to explain, but none of those lines worked for me… so in the end I decided to crop it without respecting the master photo ratio, I slightly straigthen the photo as well and saturated the colours. And although I have retouched that photo quite a bit, this is what I saw I wanted to capture! :)

Libellule

November 2010, Seychelles

The DragonFly kept flying around me, but everytime I was getting ready to take a shot it was going away. It eventually got tired (and I got more suttle in my approach!) and finally stayed still long enough for me to get quite close. I was lucky enough not to clip any of the wings but it took a ew attempts. I did crop this picture slightly on the right so the wings span exactly the same through the frame. I like the wings details and how the red of the dragonfly body matches the red of the plant’s tip. All in all, I thought the colours worked well together. It has been in fact the easiest shot of a dragonfly so far! (llok in the archives for the shot of dragonfly I took in France, Chamonix).

Not Scared!

November 2010, Seychelles

It was very low tide and I was walking quite far out in the sea with water at my ankles. When I noticed the bird I rushed to change my lens to the big 300mm one… while walking in the sea, which made me somewhat nervous! I was concerned the bird was going to fly away… I was walking very slowly towards him, thinking it would by my last shot at each step I was taking… Well… why rushing?! I managed to get so close I had to stop otherwise I would have to change my lens back again. The bird did not care about me at all! it was even slightly annoying because I wanted to take it flying off… I waited a bit… made some noise… but no, that bird was happy walking around!

Mirrored Bat

November 2010, Seychelles

Those fruit bat were flying around as soon as the sunset started, they looked like they were flying from island to island too. the problem with this time of the day is the very low light and a lot of my shot were either too dark or the bats were blurry because they were moving too fast. After about 30 minutes of shooting, and failing to get a decent shot, I noticed they seem to have a fly path. I patiently waited in the sea, with water up to my knee and eventually noticed those 2 bats coming from a remote island. I took a few test shot in manual mode to get the right balance of shutter speed and light, I only had a few seconds but I was ready for them and was actually focusing my attention on the top bat, I want to capture it while it was making a V with its wing, the fact the bottom one was in a reverse V when I took the shot was pure luck. I tryied to post process this photo and remove some of the noise, but the end result is not really to my taste… in the end, I dont mind the noise that much, the grain gives it something in my opinion. Therefore this photo had not post-processing work done to it, exactly how I like my photos to be :)

New Life

February 2010, Oxford, UK

This was a lucky shot, I just happened to arrive right after that butterfly came out of its cocoon. Part of me would have liked to see that happening so I could capture that moment too, but I am also very happy that there is just the one butterfly, matching its coccon

This photo, in December 2010,  finished 3rd at a photo competition within my company, 900 people did participated, putting forward a few photos each and 1,500 people voted for the top 18 photos.
2 of my photos finished in the top 18 and that one finished between 5 and 18 :), only the top 5 had prices so I don’t know the exact place on the ladder the other one finished at.
What is funny is that I had no idea there was a theme, I did not take the time to read the not so small prints! the theme was “Diversity and Integrity”.
So when I was told my photos were selected for the final, where the top people in the company were to vote for the top 5, I was asked to explain why I chose that photo as an example of Diversity and Integrity. I scribbled the following between catching 2 planes and with not much sleep, this is all I could come up with :)

BUTTERFLY
I chose that photo because it is a magical moment to see the birth of a butterfly.
There was an amount of luck to be there at the right moment so only one butterfly could be seen, matching its cocoon.
It is a symbol of how frail and alone one can feel when starting something new.

Blurred Freedom

May 2009 – Lake District, UK

There is indeed a lot of sheep in that part of England. As I was walking I saw those sheep and I liked the idea of focusing on the birbwire which keeps the sheep in that field and get them on the photos as blurred. I took several shot because at first they were too blurred and you couldn’t make out what those white dots were… I was tempted to keep it that way and decided it would have been too arty! ;)

Hungry for an icecream

June 2008 – Mysore, India

It is well known that cow are sacred in India and there are lot of them roaming the streets freely. As I arrived in Mysore I couldn’t help but smile when I saw that cow walking towards the icecream man… it stayed there for a while and even tried to put its head in the “freezer’. The man ended up giving the cow a cone to make it go away :)

King of the Roundabout!

June 2008 – Bangalore, India

On my way to Mysore, very early in the morning I came accros a small village and here it was… a goat sitting at the centre of that roundabout! :)

In fact, it was attached to one of the post… nevertheless, it seemed quite happy there!

Blue one

August 2005 – Barnes, London, UK

Barnes is a small village just south west London. It is my favorite place in London in fact! They have some kind of bird center there. As I was visiting it with some friends who came to visit me from France, it was a sunny day full of life (birds that mean). I especially liked that bird with this brigth blue beak!

Scout dog

August 2006, Ferte, France

It was another pretty little French village with very old houses cramped all together… as I was walking randomly in those streets I noticed that little dog… he only stayed there for a short time before getting scared and running back inside!

Lonely Turtle

June 2006 – Vancouver – Canada

Vancouver is a very nice town and has a beautiful sea side with lot of wild life/plants. While walking in what I think was some kind of park I saw this lonely turtle sunbathing on a rock.