Daisy

The scientific name being Leucanthemopsis alpina, very similar to the Bellis perennis, and commonly know as Daisy, this flower, for some reason, immediately recalls childhood, joy, freedom, to me.

It's probably because it's so easy to be found on the alps, where I've spent a lot of time when I was a child, "trekking" with my parents on the mountains around our comfortable flat in Sauze di Cesana, a small (very small!) village not far from Torino.

I have many memories of that place, and that period. When we finally left the flat, I was 9. It's 19 years ago now... That sounds so much! Still, I can remember it very well: the garden surrounding the house, the child I was playing with, and Champion, a german shepherd dog who turned out to be one of my best friends ever.

Believe me, it's not that I've never been on the mountains again since. We bought our own flat then (well... my parents did) in Briançon, a nice city on the other side of the Alps, in France... but, to put it simply, it has never been the same again.

Anyway, it happens, sometimes, that some little details, some colours, some perfumes, some tastes, they recall us something from the past, of a lost time which will never really come back, but which will not get lost anyway.

Daisy, to me, is one of those little details, and that's why is somehow quite recurrent in my photos, whenever I can find a nice one.
This was the case for the one I'm showing you here. I was on a photo-trekking around Chamrousse, on a warm, sunny middle august day. I just had lunch (I had prepared some tasteful rice salad to bring along with me) on the shore of a magnificent mountain lake, and it was time to go back down. I was walking on the path, when I sow this wonderful daisy, standing there just by the side. On the background, the mountains were standing proud against the sky, so I had this vision.

In my photos, I often put a subject on a foreground, using the background as, well, a background. This was the case: my subject was the Daisy, but I wanted to transmit my personal meaning of daisy: a symbol of peace, a sign of the mountains, a wish of freedom.
So, I put on my 50mm f/1.4, closed down a bit (f/5.6) to ensure a depth of field allowing to have the flower pretty sharp, and to still recognise the background, leaving it out of focus anyway.
This way, the flower becomes my subject, and the mountains behind become my feeling, what that flower means to me. The result works well.
This is how a selective focus can be used to "write down" emotions, to describe our feelings.
Photography is poetry, after all!

Sunrise Coffee

What is coffee to you?

For many, is a way to begin a new day: that touch of energy to let the morning go the way it should.

And what's the best way to drink coffee? Well, I guess, sitting on a balcony, sun rising, calm and peaceful.

Well, I wanted to re-create this kind of atmosphere, but that's not easy, when you don't have any balcony, and it's 3pm on a hot middle august day. So... how to do that?

That's were strobes come to help: if used correctly, they can allow you to control the light the way you want.

For this shot, I didn't use any unbelievable instrument: just two strobe lights, a reflective surface, and a coloured gel.

The more important thing was actually to balance lights such that the effect might result in a photo as "natural" as possible.

First of all: the sun-effect. For this, I was putting my 580EX II on camera right, just a bit higher than the subject, and as far as I could, with just a CTO gel on it, to give this yellowish colour one should expect from a sunrise. This eventually gave me these long, rather hard shadows. They really look like natural, don't they?

By only using that light, anyway, I would have had too much contrast between the right and the left side of the subjects, this resulting in either over or under-exposed images.

To comply with this, I was using a silver-reflecting surface just next to the subjects, on the left.

Moreover, I was using a strobe on subject top, shot against a reflective umbrella, to gently fill light all over the scene.

The effect can actually be seen by looking at the very soft shadow below the coffee cup.

White balance was on normal flash light, without gel, such that, by using it, I could get the gentle yellow cast.

Finally, I placed the coffee capsules to fill the frame and help creating a more balanced composition.

The final effect is quite natural, and makes me want to have... one more coffee please!

Place Saint-André

I took this shot yesterday evening: I decided to go out, and try to find some spots I liked.

I've been out for about 2 hours, and essentially took two photos only. Well, this one is the second one.

You might wonder why two shots only in two hours? It's an avarage of one hour per photo!

The reason is simple... and complicate at the same time. I'm trying to improve my composition skills, and this requires a bit more of time to study for a good location, a good subject, and, well, a good composition of course.

Moreover, this photo is actually a night-time HDR, which means: several exposures, each of them several seconds long.

For this particular picture, for example, I was taking 7 different photos, then I merged them to create a High Dynamic Range image that I finally tonemapped and reduced to a 16bit image.

This allowed me to correctly expose for some hard lights (due to two big lamps on the near building facade) and the deep shadows.

Also, HDR can help to increase a lot the micro-contrast, thus giving very detailed images in all light ranges, from highlights to shadows, passing through midtones.

Of course, for such a photo to be taken, a good tripod is required.

Also, because of rather long time exposures, I was taking a dark shot for each real shot, to reduce the noise.

The final result is the one you can see here.