Chateau de Chambord

Tourists in a rowing boats on the River Cosson looking southeast towards the northern façade of Chateau de Chambord at sunset, Loir-et-Cher, Loire Valley, France. Chateau de Chambord, famous for its size, a double helix staircase and the 365 chimneys on the roof. It's in the middle of a huge park and on the northern face here three of the four large towers can be seen.

Light, as you can see, was excellent, taken at 1908. Though the price was that we arrived too later (around 1800) to be able to go into the chateau itself. Still, you are free to wander through a lot of the grounds which is good.

1/50s at f/14 47 mm ISO 125

Bourges Cathedral Sculpted Portal

This is one of the five sculpted portals on the west front of Bourges Cathedral in the Loire Valley. The projections are gargoyles. Though you can't see it here the cathedral is famous and unusual for having four large side aisles, a lack of transepts (the projecting areas to the left and right of the nave that make a church cross shaped), lots of flying buttresses and an asymmetric west face.

This photo was taken mid afternoon, the sun is quite harsh but the light reflecting off the cathedral gives it more of a warm feel. Taken lying on the ground.

1/50s at f/14 24 mm ISO 100.

Azay-le-Rideau

Azay-le-Rideau, described as a jewel on the river Indre, I think it looks better on the outside than inside. It feels quite small but from the river side it looks very good, the water is so still that you can get good reflections. This photo was taken late, late afternoon when the light was golden, being very considerate, the architect obvioulsy positioned the building to receive the western afternoon sunlight on the river side. Trees frame it quite nicely and the boat leads you in. This angle also reduces the likelihood of other tourists getting into the shot.

1/50s at f/11 ISO 50 24 mm

Chateau Villandry - Love garden

Chateau Villandry is one of the main chateaus in the Loire Valley and famed for its formal gardens, especially the potager or vegetable gardens. There's a whole collection of others though, music, water, herb and in this case the love gardens.

A Maltese Cross can be quite clearly seen here on the mid right hand side of the frame, the other two are the Pays Basque and Languedoc crosses, though in this case you need to close one eye stand on one leg to make it out. The splashes of lilac at the back of the frame are the lavender bushes of the music garden.

Even if you are not a massive garden fan (esp. formal gardens) the layout, scale quality is quite amazing. (It's also a pretty convenient drive from Tours airport.) We spent a good few hours here and were rewarded by the sun breaking out in the afternoon.

Should have stopped down the aperture a bit more here though had a circular polarizer on.

1/80s at f/9.0 65 mm ISO 100

Flying Off

Well the market is going south and photoshelter has also gone down (pemanently) which means all the links from the previous posts need to be redirected...

Took this leaning out of the window of my flat when I noticed that the clouds were turning an amazing pink during the sunset. Luckily the day was good for contrails as well which allowed me to get this jet on heathrow approach against the pink contrails.

1/100s at f/ 7.1 100 mm ISO 200

Gulf of Fethiye

Dawn, looking from Kucuk Sarsala towards Gocek, on the north end of the Gulf of Fethiye, Turkey. Fethiye is on the south west coast of Turkey and very popular for sailing. Fethiye Marina can be seen here. The rising sun made the hills surrounding the bay a gentle shade of blue. I've always liked the shots of layers of hills and colours and here was my attempt. I think the silhouette of the tree gives it a oriental landscape feel as well, though the swing hanging off it doesn't help.

I think this was taken off the bow of our yacht but the sea, as you can see was very calm which But I still had to worry about the boat's motion when taking this photo. However, as the sun was quite bright I could push the shutter speed up and still have a decent aperture.

1/250s at f/14 99 mm ISO 160

Sunbeam Marrakech Souk

Pretty happy with this one when it came out; I skipped lunch to have a look at the souq as the sun was quite high and should have been right for creating sunbeams. The only tricky part then was to find the right place with just the right number of people and room to put my tripod down, which is not that easy in such as busy place as Marrakech.

In addition, the Lonely Planet states that Moroccans rate tourists in order of gullibility, with the Japanese heading the list. Talk about bees around honey... "Hey Japan Japan!"; "Konnichiwa! Konnichiwa!"

"Je suis anglais" et "je suis chinois" didn't really convince anyone. However, I have to say that once people realised that no, I didn't need a carpet weighing two times my baggage allowance or a silver teapot, they would chat to you instead and have a look at what you were doing in a friendly manner.

This was the second best shot I should have taken - the best one unfortunately had the rather large posterior of a lady in it which unbalanced the frame. Long exposure time to get the sunbeam and dark souk interior lit. The point sources of light also show the eight bladed apeture of the lens.

5.0s at f/22 28 mm ISO 100