Paris - Skating, Sunset and Champs Elysee

I tried various lenses to capture the skating rink in front of the Hotel de Ville. The 24mm gave an undistorted but narrow view of the rink so I preferred the fisheye even with the distortion. I also did some slower shutterspeed panning with a longer lens and tried the sweep facility on the Fuji, which gave a very strange result if I didn't keep it horizontal during the movement. Another beautiful sunset - golden rather than red and then twilight on the Champs Elysee. Witnessing all the crowds around, we decided to give the midnight celebration a miss!

Sunrise and Sunset, Paris

One of the advantages of a December trip to Paris is that sunrise is at a civilised hour (8.15am at present). This gives plenty of opportunity for my favourite backlighting shots on a walk from the hotel to Les Invalides. The first panorama at Les Invalides was shot using the Fuji sweep facility, the second with a 16 mm lens cropped. A bride just happened to arrive in the scene.  The last two are from the opposite end of the day as the sun set at the Botanic Gardens.

Trees and Shadows from Paris

Various tree cameos from a walk along the Seine and surrounds. The first two were taken with the P007 Cokin infrared filter, which worked very well in the bright sunlight. Unfortunately it became unglued from its improvised mount so back to the drawing board as regards design.

Paris for the New Year 1

Our first afternoon in Paris and a bitterly cold one but, undeterred, we set off to photograph around the Eiffel Tower as the sunset and the light faded.  Here are a few favourites

Christmas Day

Mince pie eaten, milk drunk and carrot nibbled - even left a shiny nose. And then we found the footprints!!

Sadie up since 4am waiting till she could wake her sister, while Meredith was not happy to be woken at 5.30am

The girls happy with their various presents.

  Meredith's rather large new Basset Hound Doug and Bracken, Peter and Holly's new and very handsome dog.

Cokin P007 filter for Infrared Photography

I have been playing around with a p007 deep red filter to give an infrared -type image. My first attempts were a failure as light could get into the lens round the side of the Cokin filter holder, so I glued the round Cokin P007 filter to an adaptor ring of the right size for my Fuji lens and today trialled this. This has worked well and I now get an image with some of the characteristics of an infrared sensor at least if converted to monochrome. Images 4, 5 and 7 are without the filter.  Generally they seemed to work best with a slight toning. It will be a useful addition to the 'travel' camera bag when carrying my heavy Canon converted infrared camera is not appropriate.