Gwen is in charge of clothes, medical kit and toiletries. As you can imagine, I’m in charge of all the electrical equipment. That’s a lot of stuff to bring. In bulk

• Binoculars: we’ll be passing through Cat Tien National Park and will need them to spot birds and gibbons.
• A host of plugs and adaptors, given the amount of gear we’re bringing. USB cables galore
• The GoPro for the Vlog that Joachim wants to make
• External batteries (30,000mA so that the kids don’t find themselves in recovery position because their smartphones are discharged…)
• Cameras with their batteries and associated chargers
• My laptop: I’m the type of person who spends nearly 1 hour editing the day’s photos the same evening. I don’t like to deal with it later, because the task would be too big … I procrastinate on a lot of things, but not this!
• My external HDD to store all those big RAW files

For a long time I wondered what gear I was going to take on the trip. For our last trip to Thailand, I packed my Ricoh GRD IV, my Fujifilm X-E2 and the 23mm f1.4 I’d just got for Christmas. In the end, I never used the Ricoh for the whole trip. This trip marked my transition to 35mm. I’ve kept it ever since!

You may not know it, but a few months ago I fell for the Fujifilm X-E3. My X-E2 was starting to give up a bit and I needed another camera to continue using my 35mm f0.95 lenses (which I love!) and also my 23mm f1.4. The Fujifilm X-E4 was my first choice, but given the second-hand prices, the X-E3 was preferable. So here I am with a new camera: the Fujifilm X-E3.

• 24 MP
• An inferior EVF (it’s crazy that, with an upgrade, it’s not as good as the X-E2’s EVF …)
• A useless touch screen
• A pop-up flash that has disappeared (sic)
• A supposedly faster AF (something I couldn’t care less about …)
• Some Simu made in Fujifilm (also useless for me)

So what should I take? Knowing that during our visit to Cat Tien National Park, my 50-200mm zoom lens would be very useful in case of an encounter with gibbons perched high in the trees … But lugging around so much gear just for this outing makes , no way !.

I’ve made up my mind. I’m only going with the Ricoh GR3. With 7 extra batteries! Yes, you can never be too far-sighted with the lousy battery life of this camera … I’ll be able to juggle between the 28mm for landscapes and the 35mm for everything else. And for the birds and gibbons? well, I’ll just enjoy the show! Joachim will also be carrying a Lumix TZ90 compact that he borrowed from his grandad. Zoom 24-720 mm !!!! Well, it won’t be the same quality as my Fujifilm, but it’ll be more than enough to get close-ups of gibbons if we can find any!

So that’s it, it’s going to be a light trip in terms of gear for me. Just the Ricoh GR3. Yes, that unloved camera about which I’ve said a lot of bad things. I refer you to my Blog about it. I’ve been using it for almost a year now and, for want of a better word, I’ve accepted its faults. Its lousy AF, its overheating that forces me to switch the camera off (otherwise it switches itself off …), its lack of pop-up flash. As for the rest, I’ve got used to its ergonomics (remember, I was quite critical of the position of the on/off and shutter release buttons). It’s worth noting that I’ve sorted out a very annoying design problem with this camera. From time to time, my Ricoh would switch itself off with the lens out. There was no way of switching it off properly. You had to take the battery out and put it back in to turn the camera back on. This problem was very recurrent and clearly spoilt the experience. On examining the battery compartment, I realised that the battery wasn’t sitting straight. The battery ejection spring must be too hard and it happens from time to time that the battery connectors don’t make contact with the camera connectors. Problem solved with a piece of paper between the battery and the battery door. How much does this camera cost? 1000€? Oh Ricoh/Pentax, I suggest that for the next iteration of the Ricoh GR, you put a thick layer of plastic on the right-hand side of the battery door to avoid this problem …Since then I’ve had no more problems with my camera turning itself off!

I’m sorry about this blog going off in all directions, but you’re used to that. I hope you have a great holiday as we move into 2025. See you next year! Best wishes to you all!

All photos were taken with the Ricoh GR3 | Crop 35 mm.

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Before going any further and presenting my twelve photos from 2024, I thought it would be nice to also share my twelve photos from 2023. Ok, admittedly a bit late, but it’s never too late to make up for lost time. So drum roll! Here’s My Twelve from 2023!

Looking back, I think this selection is pretty good, and as it was made at the end of 2024, it’s even better than if I’d made it at the end of 2023! It almost makes me want to share my 2024 selection with you at the end of next year! But no, I’m going to do it now, because I may not have told you, but the beginning of the year is going to be busy. We’re off to Vietnam on 1 January for just over 2 weeks! We’ll be staying in the south of the country, towards the Mekong delta. After Thailand last year, we’re off to another Asian country. We hadn’t planned to leave so soon after the previous trip, but we’re taking advantage of the fact that this year has no major deadlines for the boys’ studies. So things are really hectic at home. Between the end-of-year celebrations and the forthcoming departure for Vietnam, the children are all excited!

But I’ve strayed far from the subject of this blog, which was the 12 outstanding photos of 2024 as far as I’m concerned. No real surprises there. If you regularly read the few articles I publish during the year, you’ll already have seen these photos scattered throughout my posts. So here they are, all in one blog.

As you know (or don’t know…), since the beginning of the year I’ve given up shooting 28mm and only 35mm. It’s probably the biggest change I’ve had to make on the street since I started. Even moving from Aix-en-Provence to Saint-Denis doesn’t have the same impact on my work. I’m glad I switched from 2024 to 35mm. I realise that I got used to this focal length quite quickly, which, from my point of view, is very similar to 28mm. I started the year with the Fujifilm X100F, but it wasn’t long before the Ricoh GR3 became my go-to on the street. In 2025, I’ll continue with the Ricoh GR3. I’ve accepted its shortcomings and I can’t see myself taking photos with any other camera. For Vietnam, I’ll still have the Fujifilm X-E3 with the 35 mm and 55-200 mm zoom lens and, of course, the Ricoh GR3!

Even though there was a clear slowdown at the end of the year, I’m pretty happy with the work I’ve produced this year. In any case, I hope you enjoy the festive season with your loved ones and I’ll see you next year!

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TWELVE. Don’t think I’m going to share my end-of-year photos with you just yet. Nothing like that! Even though I’ve found it hard to write anything over the last few months, I’ve continued to wander the streets and take photos. As I’m sorely lacking in ideas for writing an interesting Blog, I’ve decided to share a few photos with you. So 12 of them.

#1

In this first photo, what obviously attracted me was the gesture of the young lady with her hand resting nicely on her hip. There’s an echo with the hand of the boy who walked past me. It happens very quickly and I didn’t think much about this one. It’s an instinctive shot. The situation dictates the shutter release. I think the photo would have been more successful with the boy on the girl’s right. But I’m not a fan of burst photography. Even if this photo is imperfect, I really like it.

#2

There’s not much going on in the streets of Saint-Denis and when a situation like this arises, a certain excitement can be felt! These girls with their flower crowns didn’t go unnoticed and I tried to photograph them without attracting their attention. I don’t really like interfering with what’s going on in the street. The Ricoh GR3 is perfect for this.

#3

In Geoff Dyer‘s book The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand, there’s a photo I really like. For those who have the book, it’s plate 30. G.Dyer starts like this: ‘Life is about decision and indecision’. The man is about to enter this grocery shop. The dynamics of his body contrast with his head, which is clearly turned towards something that seems to have caught his attention on the other side. We don’t know exactly what it is, and there’s a certain tension in the photo that stems from this hesitation. G. Dyer goes on to say that ‘it’s not the decisive moment but the moment of indecision’. That’s how I felt when I took this photo.

#4

Not much to say about this one. When I first started doing street photography, I didn’t feel comfortable taking people’s pictures and very often I asked permission. I don’t do that any more. It’s also very rare for me to interact with the people I photograph. Here I chatted a bit with the man and then took a photo. Réunion is a fairly poor French department overall. This man was standing on the pavement selling some fruit and vegetables he’d picked from his garden, as well as the two birds that caught my eye.

#5

I had started an article on the Dipavali festivities (Tamil festival of lights). I threw it all in the bin. I thought the article was rubbish… And yet I had quite a few photos to share taken during this event. You’ll just have to make do with this one! As you can imagine, I took a lot of risks to take this photo. I ended up all sticky and my Ricoh suffered the assaults of dust and splashes of water. It’s still functional but I picked up some dust on the sensor… Here it’s the girl’s body language that made me take the shot. Ok she was pretty as well …

#6

Here too, the trigger is the synchronised gestures of the two women. It’s a fairly simple photo that relies solely on this. I sometimes take complicated photos with several levels of interpretation. None of that here. It’s as basic as it gets!

#7

Layers, layers, layers… The thing we’re all trying to do. I always find it quite complicated to set up. Here, I was helped by the 3 people in the middle shot. They were sitting on a bench at the bus stop. In fact there’s a fourth person on the left who I excluded to take this photo. I’d done a small series of photos with these four people and I’d exhausted the potential. A bus arrived, there was movement and chaos began to set in. I love those moments when things are moving all over the place and you have to reorganise everything in the frame to take a photo. That’s when I get excited and adrenaline pumping. So these 3 static people offered me a layer. All I had to do was play with a background and a foreground. That’s what I managed to do with this photo. OK, there’s nothing exceptional going on in the image, but the street is like this.

#8

As I said earlier, very often nothing happens in the street. It’s the way we see things that gives us a different perspective on the little scenes that take place in the street. There wasn’t much going on here either. I was just drawn to this girl who had her hand behind her back with her palm open. That’s quite unusual. She was also scratching her right foot with her left foot. That’s all I needed to take a photo. The framing makes this photo much more interesting than it really is.

#9

This grocery shop is right next to the bus stop where I took quite a few photos. This is the corner where almost all the drunkards of Saint-Denis gather… Alcoholic beverages must account for more than 95% of this shop’s turnover. And right next door we have the busiest bus stop in town… I photograph everything in the street. I rarely censor myself. Some people have qualms about certain situations. Personally, if I find something interesting, I click. That’s what I did that day…

#10

One of the marginalised people I’m used to seeing in the street. This man is not in his right mind. You only have to walk past him to hear him chanting all sorts of things. He’s not aggressive and he’s not bothering anyone. He just wanders around the city. He found himself in the middle of a huge crossroads with all the cars swirling around him, a bit lost. The people on the pavements were looking at him and so were the people on the bus. I love the reflection of the two people on the glass doors of the bus.

#11

This photo is like a layer cake. A layer of white, followed by a layer of black and then a layer of blue! I wondered what these faceted balls were doing on this cookware stand at the market. I made sure that the silver elements were on the dark side so that they stood out. Sometimes people aren’t the most important elements in a composition.

#12

I’ve saved this one for last. This photo is far from perfect. If I was Steve McCurry, I’d wave my magic wand and make the palm tree next to the woman’s face disappear… But I won’t. The street doesn’t have to be perfect. The attitude of the two protagonists shows a certain tension. The stern-looking man seems to be giving the woman an order. There is also a kind of latent domination due to the position of the two characters. As always, you can invent your own story from this image. A questioning photo is always a good photo.

And that’s it. I’ve finished with these twelve photos. As you can see, I haven’t been idle for many months. I’m having trouble finding interesting things to write about. In the end, talking about these few photos will have allowed me to share them with you.

All photos were taken with the Ricoh GR3 | Crop mode 35 mm

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