Inspirations – Spiritual Wood by Philippe Sainte-Laudy

© Philippe Sainte-Laudy

Nikon D300 Nikkor 18/200mm at 
38 mm  
2 sec. 
f/16 ISO400

Hi, I’m Philippe Sainte-Laudy. I live near Strasbourg in France. My goal in the world of photography is to strive for originality, and create my images into an art form. I like photographing nature and in particular landscapes. Photographer by passion for years, today I have my own business.

I also like optimizing and working my images with software such as Photoshop, Aperture or Lightroom.

I hope that photography can bring people closer to nature and encourage them to preserve it for future generations.

This photo was taken this autumn in France near Strasbourg. The season was beautiful this year! The woods were bathed in a light yellow to brown. Almost magical! I also used a tripod to get a good depth of field and bring out maximum detail. I used several layers set in Photoshop to optimize the atmosphere of this forest and give an artistic touch.

I recently published two free ebooks. The first talks about landscape photography and the second includes my best photographs of autumn this year. A kind of Best of …

Thank you to Darwin for allowing me to talk about myself without moderation.

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Travel Photo Contest – Jim Dobie

Jim Dobie

©Jim Dobie

This photo was taken in Paris during the summer of 2006. We had stopped for lunch and while my wife was planning the afternoon’s activities I noticed this rather casual collection of building materials serving duty as the weather protection system atop this clunker of a building. It’s a roofing contractors nightmare and no less of one for the people living beneath I would imagine. No doubt there are many hours spent emptying the buckets when it rains. Or maybe no one worries to much about it, opting instead to just have another glass of wine as the puddles deepen – Parisians can be like that and I find it rather charming.

Travel Photo Contest – Elena Elisseeva

Elena Elisseeva

©Elena Elisseva

This photo was taken on our trip to France. After staying in Paris for a couple of days, we rented a tiny car and just drove around the country for 2 weeks, finding hotels along the way with various degrees of difficulty. We made it to south of France and then it was time to turn back if we wanted to catch our plane back to Canada. As it turned out, it wasn’t that simple. Everyone who drove in the south of France in the summer knows that roads and highways are very congested. We got even “luckier” – first the shore road was blocked by a huge tree that fell onto someone’s car, and then when we finally made it to a highway, it turned out to be closed because of forest fire! So we had to improvise, get off the highway and try to get to Paris some other way. We were short on time, so we drove until it was pretty late in the day, about 8 pm. We were able to find accommodation near town of Sisteron, where we went to have some dinner. As we approached the restaurant, the scene in front of us transformed – the last rays of sun illuminated the rock across the river and houses built into it, painting everything in pastel-pink. I grabbed the camera and forgot that it was freezing and we were tired and hungry and kept snapping until the sun finally hid behind the cloud. That was a perfect ending of a not-so-perfect day.

Travel Photo Contest – Puspita Sekarsari

Puspita Sekarsari

©Puspita Sekarsari

This picture was taken by me when I traveled to Japan for the first time. I’ve been so excited to go to Japan since I was young and finally I got the chance. I promised myself that if I go to Japan, I’ll take a lot of pictures. This picture is one of my favourite. It was taken at Tokyo tower, one of famous architectural building located at Tokyo, Japan. Since I couldn’t take the whole buildings because of the space limitation, I tried to take the peak of it.

Travel Photo Contest – Andrew Kulin

Andrew Kulin

©Andrew Kulin

Canon 40D + 17-55/2.8 IS @17.0 mm, f/5.6, 0.6 seconds, ISO 800 (hand-held), September 1, 2009.

We spent 3-1/2 weeks in France last summer with my parents, siblings, spouses and kids celebrating my parents 50th wedding anniversary and had a fantastic time.  This is a photograph of two visitors at the Maison Forte de Reignac located near Tursac in the Dordogne Region of France.  It is a 14th to 16th century castle built into a natural cave once used by the Cro-Magnon people who lived in the region over 10,000 years ago.  The front half of the interior looks much as what you would expect for an old French castle, with furnished rooms, passageways, period weaponry and armour.  The rear half is comprised of a large cave with rock and dirt floors, and with displays of locally found artefacts from the Upper Palaeolithic Period.  A very unique place well worth a visit.

This particular photograph was taken hand-held under low light conditions from the top of the stairwell.  Although the lens I was using has image stabilization, I rested my elbows on the stone parapet and leaned against the wall to provide additional support as the lighting conditions were dictating 0.6 seconds, with my speed already boosted to ISO 800 (I normally limit myself to no more than ISO 400 to minimize digital noise).  I shot ten photographs of this couple moving up and down the stairwell and this was the best of the ten as the blurred movement of the pair gives them a ghost-like appearance.  I also quite like how the mixture of natural and artificial light interacts in this photograph.  Of the 8,000 + photographs I took during this trip, this may be my favourite (certainly in my top five).

Travel Photo Contest – Craig Brown

Craig Brown

The image was taken in 1995 on Fuji Velvia Slide Film. I took it on my honeymoon.

My wife at the time and I had been touring through France and had stopped in a small town to eat dinner. She was conversing with the waitress since she spoke French and mentioned that we wanted to go to Castle Chenonceaux. She also mentioned that I was an avid photographer. The waitress told her that everyone always photographed the castle from the other side, but if we went across the river and drove down a small road we would get a different view. She gave us a hand drawn map. The next morning we followed the instructions and the this image is a result!