Birds, flowers and insects

A few more photos from previous week, when we went near to the park behind Notre Dame. There are some more, we're not done yet!

In other news, hopefully tomorrow (Aug 21), the 18-55 mm lens will be here, which means that I'll be able to take other kinds of photos as well as portraits, which I'm planning on starting quite soon. Off to today's photos now.

The pigeons were around the people, waiting, almost forcing for some pieces of bread. This little guy came, took the remains of an ice-cream cone and left. Kind of a lonely eater, I suppose.

Nice brown colour that looks better after the editing.

Now for the hardcore stuff. Bees, wasps, hairy or bald, there's enough yellow dust for everyone in the garden!

Let's lighten up the colours a bit, shall we? Yeah, much better now.

Various representatives of the bee-like insect family (And I'm not even an entomologist!) are keeping two flowers busy. The shallow depth of field makes the image look almost like fake.

Some colour enhancing and the result looks even nicer. Great stuff. Just great stuff. Remember to click on the photos in order to see them bigger and in more detail.

Duck tales #2: The revenge

I know that "The revenge" is not a very inspired title for a sequel, but I find it funny anyway. Tonight (or today, depending on where you are) we have three more photos from the Square Du Temple. They are just too good to keep them and enjoy them myself. Such beauty needs to be shared! So, let's begin.

One of the duck portraits I took. I liked it also very much. The patched light on the background isn't affecting much the subject, which is in the shade.

The same fellow, with more live colours and a bit sharper.

I don't know what kind of bird this is. And the fact that it started swimming like a duck, didn't help me much.

Luckily, there is no problem that cannot be solved with some good editing. Although, now that I see it again, maybe I could add some saturation to enrich the colours.

A little waterfall. Although people like to get the milky effect that can be achieved with slow shutter speeds, I prefer to get the water with no motion effect.

And I like the photo a bit sharper too. Beautiful places sure give plenty of photo opportunities.

Also, there is a little bonus today. A video that I took, in the effort to learn the video recording capabilities of the 650D. There's a lot of noise from the lens as it's trying to autofocus and it's clear that autofocus is not reliable when it comes to video, since it takes a lot of time to catch the subject. At least, this is the truth with the telephoto lens. As for the 18-55mm, I have no idea, since the seller hasn't bothered to answer yet. Anyway, here's the video!

Duck tales at Square du Temple

My first day out with the 650D and I had a chance to exercise in a beautiful park with a pond. And what a day that was! I took over 200 photos and I was really excited with the capabilities of the camera. Of course, as a beginner I have nothing to compare it with besides the Android phone, but still, it was a great experience. There were the occasional mistakes, like pictures with too high ISO that produced a very grainy outcome, but they are a necessary part of the learning process.

The whole selecting took a lot of time, mostly because of the pretty old laptop on which I'm doing all the work. Poor thing, it's like loading a bicycle basket with three friends and trying to go to the nearby town. Anyway, I'm giving you four of the photos that made me look at the LCD screen with a wide smile. As usual, first the untouched one and afterwards the edited one.

Is it a totem? A scarecrow? You know, something to scare the birds away. If it is, it's not very successful. But it's nice. Like everything in that little pond and around it.

Here's the same photo, but with some editing. I also used a bit of sharpening but I don't know how well I did. But I'm still learning and practice makes perfect.

A duck gang. They look like a band the way they are posing. As usual, the bassist and the drummer are behind and off focus and the lead singer with the guitarist are in front. Hah! Posers!

Really, if they were a band, what would be their name? The Ducktators? Duck Bang? I guess we'll never know.

This little thing here, I loved it. This specific pose, I mean. I took a few more, but this one made me want to jump in joy.

I love the way it looks and searches. A few meters away, a bunch of pigeons were eating some bread, but this little guy wasn't interested to participate.

Another one that I absolutely loved. A fast shutter speed can make miracles and honestly, most of the times I prefer the perfect stop motion rather than the blur of movement.

When I took the picture, he was flapping his wings rapidly. When they do this, they don't give you much time. It's now or never. The only problem with the photo is that the head is almost at the very center of the frame, breaking the rule of thirds but I don't think that it ruins the result.

Still at Trousseau square

There are still a few pictures that I would like to give you from yesterday's day out at Trousseau park. I mean, it would be a pity not to post them, since they are quite nice. Besides, I don't know if I have anything else worth posting.

Nah, I'm joking. Of course I have. Tons. Here's the pictures. (This singular combined with plural drives me crazy)

The playground. It's cute, but I couldn't go closer and take pictures with all these children playing in there. I would have to ask their parents for permission to post them here and, well, no.

Editing doesn't help much here. Overexposed and underexposed areas cannot be recovered. A DSLR would change things, but we're still waiting.

What is a park without lots of trees and plants in general? A parking lot, maybe?

Nice, nice green. Summer is great.

Where am I? In a jungle? What happened all of a sudden?

Fear not, oh reader. For I am still in the park. These trees are high, though. Another beautiful park. Very very nice.

At Trousseau square

Today we played at another nice park. Most specifically, under the kiosk of the Trousseau square, which is near Bastille. Our audience was mostly children, some of whom were interested in playing a bit guitar, and from some moment on we were actually playing for ourselves. Still it was a nice day and I took my chance to bring home some nice pictures. Three of them are presented today. Am I spoiling my faithful readers? Maybe I'm just preparing you. Let's see today's stuff!

Flare. Once it used to be a nightmare for filmmakers, now it's used with no fear. I gave it a try as well. Meh.

The editing doesn't give any visible difference, except for the sky, maybe.

Being in a park and not taking photos of the pigeons? I don't think so.

Being in a park, taking photos of the pigeons and not intensify the colours afterwards? I still don't think so.

The park has some ping-pong tables too. I like these places with trees in the middle of the city. And they are many.

And one of them is brought to you by me. You're welcome.

A long walk. A really long one.

Today we kept on with our tourist activities. We covered the distance from Hôtel de Ville until Charles de Gaulle - Étoile. For those of you who don't know, this is about 10 stations of the metro line 1. On our way, we passed through the Louvre and the gardens of Tuileries. And Concorde. And Champs-Elysées avenue. A bit part of Paris, in a few words.

I didn't take many photos. Nikos had his Canon 500D with him and I couldn't get in the mood to use my sad Android phone. But soon...

An arc between the Louvre and the gardens of Tuileries. The exposure wasn't helping and I ended up with the sky all destroyed.

So, the whole editing concerned only the arc and a bit of the trees behind it.

And what would we do without our phallic symbols? This is the egyptian column at Concorde and we can see the Eiffel tower to our left. It's visible but it's very far!

It's a dark picture, but at least we have the clouds to add to the atmosphere. It was sunny earlier but while we were approaching the evening we got clouds and a bit of rain.

A long day out

Friends came today. And there was a long walk. I mean, really long. From Notre Dame to Concorde and back. That's like five or six metro stations. And with all the sun, my head was killing me. After about two hours of sleep and it's still messed up. I will continue as soon as I finish with the post.

While I was waiting for them, I took a walk around the area of Hotel de Ville. First of all, they have installed sand and beach volley nets in front of the Hotel de Ville. Paris has no sea, but who cares! Lack of sea doesn't mean lack of creativity!

Yes. In the middle of the city. This place changes every week. Once they install tennis courts and a big screen to watch Roland Garros, another time they have a whole garden with flowers and chairs, they had a music festival about a week ago, now this. We can't say that the people responsible for making the area great are lazy.

What I said earlier, but with more intense colours.

Near Notre Dame there is a park. All the benches were taken, at least the once in the shade. And I was there, taking photos of the pigeons bathing in the fountain and sitting around on the grass. A very nice image overall.

Of course, there were many tourists and most of them were interested in taking photos of the back side of the church.

Did I take any picture of the church? Well, no.

Not at the zoo this time

Yes, it's time for something different for a change. Yesterday we were going to a big park, but it started raining and we didn't want to risk getting in the middle of a summer storm, so we turned back. And then we saw a smaller park and we went there for a few minutes. Enough for me to take my superhuman phone and take some photos.

It was a nice park, with very thick vegetation. Here, the sky and the white buildings are burned and impossible to retrieve.

The colours were corrected, but the white remained white. You can't have it all, unfortunately. Unless you have a good camera!

And, for the first time in the history of ever, flowers! Yes, I decided to make an exception today.

The colours are more intense and nice, but there's always a burned part to remind us that we are all humans and nothing can change that, no matter how rich or poor or with a DSLR we are.

Last night I had a huge disappointment when I lost a very nice used Canon 500D in a very good price. But I keep on searching, what can I say?

Mosaics of the auditorium

At the auditorium of Sarah Bernhardt square, there are some nice mosaics, to which I will dedicate today's post. I found them too interesting to just ignore their existence. Also, I had the chance to see huge differences while editing. Let's see.

This is on the wall and on the floor, whose perimeter is used also as a pigeon bathroom. There are tons of light here, but they don't burn up the place.

This means that we can edit it and make the details show better. Very nice artwork, indeed.

This one is on the floor. Still a lot of light, which is not fair for the person or people who used so skillfully the little stones like three dimensional pixels.

Luckily, with some light manipulation, I believe that we have a better result now. I used a bit more saturation than usual, in an effort to intensify the colours even more.

Yeah, we have a third photo today. And there are still many nice shapes there. This one is also on the floor.

Some extra saturation was used here as well. Much better, right?