For the past week, I have come out of hibernation a bit. The Pentax/Ricoh episode that I told you about in my previous blog had the effect of waking me up. I wanted to dust off my GoPro. Imagine that I did not even know how to use it ! I bought it last August before coming here. I had used it very little because I was quite busy. I nevertheless looked in the internal memory and I found some videos made last year that I hadn’t even worked on. I found some photos related to this video and I assembled everything to have this last T.M.E made in Aix-en-Provence. You can see below what it is.
Continue reading T.M.E in Reunion Island
Tag Archives: 2019
Ricoh GRD4 and color
During my first years of blogging, I wrote a lot about the Ricoh GRD4. A little normal, I used this camera for almost three years continuously. Since then I switched to the Ricoh GR which is the camera that I now use on the street. But I have the impression that my blog is still associated with the Ricoh GRD4. Many people end up on my site after having researched on google for infos concerning Ricoh GRD4. These are 2 or 3 year old blogposts. Recently a person called me on YouTube asking me if it was relevant to buy a Ricoh GRD4 today and what about color photography with this camera?
Continue reading Ricoh GRD4 and color
Street Photography Tips : work the scene
Most of the time when I’m on the street, I’m on the move. I even photograph while walking without pausing. There is a lot of instinct in the way I operate on the street. I photograph what catches my attention. But sometimes, I happen to ask myself and take more time on a stage. Very often these are scenes with static characters. It’s like in landscape photography. The mountains or the trees in front of us will not move. We can take the time to compose better, to better orient ourselves in relation to the sun … It’s the same thing in certain circumstances with Street Photography.
Continue reading Street Photography Tips : work the scene
Behind this shot : Happy girl
You must have seen this photo in my last What you haven’t seen. I really like this photo and I wanted to decorticate it a bit to show you what I liked about this one. Nothing flashy. I would even say that this photo is rather ordinary. For some people it would be a derogatory definition of their work. Personally, that people describe my work as ordinary makes me rather happy. I no longer look for the exceptional on the street. Continue reading Behind this shot : Happy girl
What you haven’t seen : November & December 2019
That’s it we are in 2020 ! I hope that you all had a good holiday season and if it was rather lame, well you must be happy to have it behind you … A new year often rhymes with resolutions. None of this for me, just the distant prospect of having my qualification this year to be able to work on my own without an instructor by my side. We should also move into our new home by the end of February. In fact 2020 promises to be as busy as 2019 on my side …
Continue reading What you haven’t seen : November & December 2019
Looking back to the year 2019
December 2018 marked a radical change in the life of my family and mine. Two months earlier I had applied for a return to Reunion Island. After more than 25 years spent in Provence between Aix-en-Provence and Jouques, why want to change ? While it may seem like diving into the unknown, it really wasn’t. Finally more of a little splash. My parents and my sister being over there, our installation would be done without problems. Nevertheless we were aware that we were going to leave life as we had built it in Jouques. Lots of changes in the end for everyone. We had to sell the house we had built, to leave very close friends. Never underestimate a move, especially when it is done with children. They left friends behind. They grew up together and the separation was difficult for them. But as you well know, children are resourceful and have this ability to move forward without looking behind them.
Continue reading Looking back to the year 2019
Behind this shot : A day at the beach
This photo was taken at Boucan Canot beach. It was Wednesday and I had decided to take a day off to spend some time with the family because it was the birthday of my wife Gwen. It was early December and since we are in the southern hemisphere, it was the early beginning of summer. Some people must smile when I say that. What do you mean ? Isn’t it always summer in Reunion ? This is not completely untrue. However, we still have two distinct seasons. Southern summer and winter. There can be 10° difference between these two seasons. For the sea, the water must be at 28/29° in January and 23/24° in July. So yes, it is very hot in summer and moderately hot in winter … Continue reading Behind this shot : A day at the beach
Aix-en-Provence on my mind
I arrived in Aix-en-Provence at the end of 1997, a few months before this month of July 1998 blessed by all French Footix. That year, the French Football team became for the first time World Champion of Football. Footix was the mascot of this World Cup. I do not know why during these planetary events, there are always these ridiculous mascots. Here Footix was a pretty ridiculous cock whose name was a distant reminder to the irreducible Gallic of Uderzo. You know Asterix, Obelix, Idefix, Panoramix … Since I think that the term Footix has become pejorative when you speak of someone who loves football. I so have spent more than 20 years in Aix-en-Provence before moving to this lost island in Indian Ocean. How long do we live ? 80 years ? A bit more for some. I spent 1/4th of my life in Provence. I met my wife, I became a dad and I also discovered the Street Photography late at the age of 40. When I see some young people starting street photography, I’m a little envious because I thought that if I had been interested in Street Photography in the 80s, I could have documented this period and all those who follow-up … Regrets ? A little yes. Continue reading Aix-en-Provence on my mind
What you haven’t seen : October 2019
This slideshow has been available for two weeks already on my YouTube channel. I had not yet had the time to write a Blog to present it. You’ll see, it’s a small selection of photos. It will not take you much time to browse it … Since I returned from France, I did not spend much time doing photos. My mind is busy with something else and I do not have enough mental readiness to do Street Photography. And yet it would be a moment that I could give myself to nod my head. I found another way to let off steam after my days of work. I go to the gym. So what did I stop photography ?
Not really. As I keep saying, there is a time for everything. It will always be time to get back to it later. At the moment I am trying to acclimate myself to Reunion. When you have spent more than 20 years in the same place in France, it is not anything to move to a new place. And yet “this new place”, I was born there and I lived there when I was young. At the moment, I live in Saint-Denis but I do not consider myself at home yet. It’s funny because I’m not really from Jouques because we sold our house there, but I’m still not really from Saint-Denis. On the job side, I still have to pass my qualification that will allow me to work alone. For the moment, I am learning. It’s quite funny to be trained by people who are younger than me, but I live it pretty well. I do not have a problem with that. I have always considered that competence has no age.
I celebrated at the beginning of the month my birthday. My wife asked me jokingly what it was like to be 46 years old. I just told him that at 45, I was qualified and I had a house when at 46, I found myself in apprenticeship and I had no house … I know very well that this this situation is temporary and that in a year’s time things will have changed and I will find my very dear routine. I need this to free my mind and to include Street Photography. When I’m in the car, I can not stop scanning what’s happening around me. I do not have a camera with me, but my eyes are training to see situations that I could photograph. I do some sort of mental Street Photography without a camera …
To be honest, the only times I go out now are during my lunch breaks, my little errands or bringing the kids to their extracurricular activities. I have not yet seen what I did in November for the next What you have not seen, but it may be summed up to one or two photos ! In the meantime, I leave you with the very thin selection of this month of October !
All the photographs were made with the Ricoh GR.
3 years of blogging
Google has developed an application that allows bloggers to monitor the traffic to their website. The application in question is called Google Analytics. It is a powerful tool that gives you information on the origin of connections. Besides, it’s precise enough to give you the cities ! It’s quite funny sometimes to see that someone on the other side of the world has visited my site. I still do not think I have seen connections from Russia or China … I have to believe that my blog must deal with subversive topics and must be censored !
The most important thing in this app is the detail on the pages visited. In this case for my site, it is about the pages of blogs. There is very little passage on the portfolio part. I think it’s the blog part that brings traffic. I had discussed with a friend who was creating his website. He only wanted to highlight his portfolio on his site and nothing else. Basically use it as a showcase. I specify that he is an amateur photographer like me and not a professional. I just told him he should consider having a blog part because that’s what brings in traffic and that’s what makes people come back. With a little blog, we go from a static website to something alive. That’s why I quickly created a blog section on my site.
What is true is that it takes time. Writing articles, finding topics … To talk more specifically about my blog, I had until a while ago a target for writing dozens of articles : social networks and of course the behaviors related to those this. For a year, I left Facebook and at the beginning of the year I did the same with Instagram. Each passing day moves me a little more than a hypothetical return on these platforms. Frankly, I have absolutely no desire to return. Anyway, if it’s to become embittered and constantly complaining in blogs, it will be a holiday for everyone that I keep away from Facebook and Instagram.
When I spent a few days in Bristol, my English teacher pointed out that Blogging was also some kind of social interaction. She is not wrong on this point, but the only difference is that I share what I want, and I do not have to suffer the innumerable ads, nor the posts of others. I decide to go to blogs or sites that interest me and I do not let myself dictate what I have to see. Besides, how did one do before the event of platforms like Facebook or Instagram ? People had blogs and they were going to see other people’s blogs.
To return to my blog, it’s quite interesting to see the most read pages over time. I clearly saw a difference between when I was on social media and when I completely broke with them. The most read articles so far are those related to the Ricoh GR 3 (nearly 700 views). Those who follow are related to the gear (fuji XE2, ricoh GR or ricoh GRD4), but at a much lower level (~ 200 to 300). Clearly, if you want to attract people, you have to talk about gear. Personally, I never wrote these topics on purpose and told myself that it would make a number. It’s just a statement I make. I wrote a lot about GRD4 because it’s a camera I love. Besides, I have just cracked and buy a second hand one again … We will discuss again in a future blog ! What is amazing is to see that even after several months (even years), some blogs on the GRD4 are still read by some ! I remind you that this camera is almost 9 years old. As I told you, since I cut the bridges with social networks, my articles peak at maximum 40 readings. It’s weak I grant you but it’s like the photo, I do it for me.
My most read article to date is the interview I did with Olivier Duong, one of the co-founder of Inspired Eye. He is a guy I really like with whom I sympathized and it was important to me to do his interview. He shared the interview in his newsletter and I must have nearly 4000 views for this blog ! It was just huge but obviously it is not representative of the attendance of my blog. Other articles related to Fuji XE2 were also read a lot because of HP Chavaz, a photographer whose work I appreciate very often shared my blogs on the platform Scoop.It (If you’re using Fuji Gear, you should check this)
Two things emerge from the small study that I conducted on the attendance of my site. The first is that it is obvious that the presence on social networks increases more than significantly the traffic on my blog. Which is completely normal ; you touch a lot more people. The second thing is that articles on gear still attract many more readers. What I particularly like is that regularly I have people who arrive on my Blog from a Google search (organic). Which already means that my site is well referenced, but also that these people did not come by chance and that it is for a very precise reason.
This year so far, nearly 7,000 sessions have been recorded on my blog for just over 3,000 unique visitors. These numbers show that people are coming back to my site. My blog is a little over 3 years old today. Even if at the moment, I do not blog much, I still enjoy writing these articles and sharing with you photographic journey.
All photos were made with the Ricoh GR on Reunion Island.