Still time to wish a happy 2015 to all of you!
I hope that this new year will bring you everything that you wish for.
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With the very mild rainy and grey weather that has been present for a few weeks here in Belgium, nature is mostly grey these days. Not even some snow or ice to bring some contrast. Not very attractive for landscape photography.
So I went back to my pictures taken at the very end of October to publish this colourful post. All these images were shot during a grey morning in the Solvay Domain, in La Hulpe. The sky was a flat white screen, ideal for details of the landscape without too much contrast. The tree leaves were also still wet from a recent shower and were at their best, especially when I used a polarizing filter to remove the highlights caused by reflections on the wet leaves.
Here is a selection of my images from that colourful grey morning 😉
And I went back a few days later, this time with a little bit of sun and later with a ‘white sky’ that gave a nice even light for photographing in the forest.
The superb colours of autumn have now almost completely disappeared here in Belgium. Mid-October, I visited one of my favourite places in the Hautes-Fagnes: the Fagne de Malchamp and the Hoëgne Valley, both not far away from Spa.
I arrived in the Fagne de Malchamp just in time for sunrise. As always on this plateau, it was very windy and cold. But the warm light of the rising sun made everything, even the frost, look warmer.
I have been to this place many times so I only spent about an hour there, trying to make new images, and soon headed to another of my favourites places in the neighbourhood: the Hoëgne Valley. I particularly like the area around the Belheid Bridge, close to Solwaster. There is a sign above the path leaving the parking area that is saying that this is one of the most beautiful valleys of Belgium.
And I cannot say otherwise. You could spend hours there photographing the Hoëgne river and its valley. The river is characteristic for the region, with its very iron-rich waters, it is very dark, almost black with bits of white foam slowly moving on top of it but it can also become red when the sunlight hits it in a particular direction.
I spent several hours there, playing with slow shutter speeds and reflections of the autumn colours in the water. The results are shown in the following images.
A few weeks ago, I spent two weeks around the state of Washington and visiting the South-West of Canada, British Columbia and Alberta. I am busy with sorting and selecting my pictures taken during this trip. When they will be ready, you will be able to see them in my galleries, of course.
In the meantime, as a teaser, here is a picture taken at sunrise in one of the most iconic places in Banff National Park: Moraine Lake.
A few weeks ago, I spent a day in Paris to visit the retrospective of the work of Michael Kenna at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The exhibition is now closed but you can still see it at this virtual exhibition.
The weather was rainy the whole day. Ideal for a few photographic reflections.
To stay dry, I remained inside and visited the Musée d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou.