A quick look at the Sleeklens Through The Woods workflow for Lightroom

August 4, 2017 / No Comments

Recently, I have been contacted by the PR Relations Manager from Sleeklens, asking me if I would test and review their Through The Woods workflow. The agreement was that I would review the workflow honestly, without bias.
As was already the case earlier (see my review of printing at zor.com), this decided me to accept the request.
Here are my first impressions about the Through The Woods presets and brushes.
To illustrate this post, I used a few images from one of my trips to Northern Aragon (Spain) and the French Pyrenees.
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Ordering at Zor.com - My plexiglass test print, finally completely out of its packaging

How I print my pictures (part 2)

May 10, 2017 / No Comments

As mentioned in part 1, this post has been in my drafts folder for some time already. So prices that are mentioned below have probably changed in the meantime.

After my previous post about printing my images at Authentic, I thought that it would be useful to describe my experience with a newcomer on the market for printing images in Belgium (and France). Zor.com is a new internet printer, specialized in direct printing on several types of boards in a relatively limited range of sizes. Where they differ from the many other printers available today on internet is their prices. Surprisingly low compared to their competition.
They print on Dibond, acrylic glass, forex, carboard, and canvas.
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Maroon Creek valley, near Aspen, CO - Details of the Dibond print

How I print my pictures (part 1)

May 9, 2017 / No Comments

I have written this post (and part 2) already some time ago but had not published them yet. Here it is at last. Be aware that prices that are mentioned might have changed in the meantime, of course.

It has been some time that I have wanted to write a post about my experience with printing my images for exhibitions. As I had promised recently that I would write more about testing some techniques or material, I thought that it would be interesting to start with this part of my workflow as it is the one that is the most visible to the final viewer of my images.
This is Part 1 and you can expect Part 2 very soon, with my test of another company for printing my images.

For my very first exhibition a few years ago (Les Intrigantes), I was still optimistic and thought that I could get away with printing my pictures at one of the many general public printers available on the Internet today. I was convinced that the price would be low and hoped that the quality would be sufficient to satisfy my need for the best possible result.
I should have known better… In the end, I needed to send my images in parallel to two different internet printers to get a result only approaching what I was expecting. Some prints were too red, others were too green, none were close to the colours I saw on my calibrated display at home. In the end, a very expensive exercise and very far away from the high quality I was striving for. So, I had to turn to a better quality printer to get what I wanted.
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Importing the Picasa database to Lightroom

May 1, 2017 / No Comments

This post had been waiting in my drafts folder for a long time! Here it is published at last!

After the recent announcement by Google that they would stop active development of Picasa Desktop, a lot of people are looking for an alternative to replace it without losing all their albums, keywords,…

Good news for those who have been using Picasa Desktop to manage their pictures collection and want to switch to Lightroom: my plugin Lightroom to Picasa Importer is now available.
You might have seen my previous post about my procedure to convert Picasa Desktop albums into Lightroom collections. Although this was working, I found that it was a really cumbersome procedure and I wanted to find an easier way to do it. So, after a lot of information gathering and research on the structure of the Picasa database, I had enough information to try and build a Lightroom plugin to do the work automatically. I decided to take the plunge and quickly learned how to code in Lua to be able to write a plugin for Lightroom.
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Moebius Arch at sunrise, Alabama Hills, California

Exhibiting at the 2015 International Nature Festival in Namur

October 15, 2015 / No Comments

This year, I’m participating to the 2015 International Nature Festival in Namur with an exhibition.
I will show a series of pictures around the theme “When Nature plays Architect”.
The Festival runs from October 15 to 18 (2015) all around the city center of Namur, but my exhibition is located more specifically at the Brasserie François, place Saint Aubain, in the center of the city of Namur.
More details about the Festival here: Festival Nature Namur 2015 website

Moebius Arch at sunrise, Alabama Hills, California

Moebius Arch at sunrise, Alabama Hills, California

Le Géant Endormi

The Sleeping Giant (shown at the Festival Nature Namur 2014)

December 7, 2014 / No Comments

As announced in my previous post, one of my pictures has been selected by the 2014 International Namur Nature Photography Competition.
I wanted to wait to show the image here to keep the exclusivity for those of you who were going to visit the exhibition in Namur. The Festival has now ended so here is my picture.
I did not get the 1st prize in the Landscape category with it but is was still one of the few selected in this category. In total, 141 pictures have been selected in 13 categories, from 6200 submitted images. Not bad!
If you visited the exhibition of the Competition during the first week-end of the Festival, you would not have found my picture (as I experienced it myself). A problem seems to have occurred when printing my image and this led to a delay while a new print was produced. Anyway, it was finally visible during the rest of the exhibition. When I saw it, I was a bit surprised by its size, or rather its lack thereof! I’m so used to seeing in a very large print that I found the Competition standardized print length (80 cm) very short.
Some of you who had visited my latest exhibition in June might remember this image as I had shown it there too.

The sleeping giant

The sleeping giant

This picture was taken in central Oregon, in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Painted Hills Unit). I had seen pictures of this place before and I really wanted to see it by myself. I was based in Bend for a few days during my trip to Oregon a few years ago and getting to the Monument meant more than 2 hours drive. The weather when I arrived there was depressing, with low clouds and rain. I thought that I had not done this trip to go back empty handed so I started to explore the area and took a few pictures, mostly details to avoid the grey and sad sky. But just before I was going to leave at the end of the day, the sky finally cleared partially, just enough to let the end of the day sun illuminate the hills. The light was marvelous, with the sun low on the horizon bringing out all the details and colours of the ground still wet from the rain. And the dark grey clouds still present in the East gave me a nice backdrop. Even if the light was changing fast, I took the time to set up my tripod and take a series of several (vertical) images that I later combined with AutopanoPro to obtain this landscape image. Working this way allows me to print this image up to a large size with excellent quality. I had a ‘test print’ done at 180×60 cm, now hanging on a wall at home, and, each time I look at it, I still see new details that I had not noticed before.
If you want to see more images from this amazing place, have a look at my Oregon gallery.

Festival Nature Namur 2014

One of my pictures will be exhibited at the Nature Namur Festival 2014

October 9, 2014 / No Comments

You may not know the Festival Nature Namur ?
It has become a reference for nature movies and photography. This year, it is celebrating its 20th anniversary and takes place from October 10 to 19, in the belgian city of Namur.

Festival Nature Namur 2014

Festival Nature Namur 2014

And for my very first participation to the International Nature Photography Competition, organized during the Festival, one of my pictures has been selected in the Landscape category and will thus be shown during the Festival. Maybe I could even win a prize ? Who knows. Wait and see until October 17, when the awards are distributed.

If you love nature, if photography (or movies: a large part of the Festival is about nature documentaries) is of interest to you, or if you have children who love animals (the subject of most the exhibited pictures), I strongly advise you to go there and enjoy the beauty of the pictures that will be exhibited there. Mine include of course 🙂
And to help make it even better, access to all pictures exhibitions is free of charge.

The Festival takes place from October 10 to 19 in Acinapolis (Jambes, part of Namur) as well as in the city of Namur itself and a few neighbouring villages.
Practical details and full programme are available on the website of the festival (in French):
The full programme (pdf)
The names of the photographs selected for the International Nature Photography Competition of Namur
Access (large free car park)

Do not hesitate, go and visit it, it is really worth it!

Poster Randonnée d'Artistes de Rixensart

Back after more than a year of silence

June 10, 2014 / 10 Comments

Yes! In case you wondered, I’m still alive and I’m back after more than a year without updates of this website.
Circumstances of life made it almost impossible for me to take care of my website during the last year.

I want to apologize for this silence to all readers but especially to the users of my WP Supersized plugin who have sent many questions left unanswered.
If you are one of them, note that I am busy preparing an update of the plugin to solve some issues that appeared since the last update. A little bit more patience and the new update will be ready for download.
Also, if your questions about WP Supersized are still unanswered and you still need help, please send me these questions again (first check the new version when available) as I will most probably not have the time to go over all the questions/comments that I had received during the last year.

Among others things, I am currently working on a brand new and improved version of my website. Still in development but I hope to have it ready during the summer.

In the meantime, I invite you to visit my next exhibition, entitled “When nature plays architect“, during the Randonnée d’Artistes de Rixensart !
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