The French Photographer Weblog

My friend Matt Odom and his new venture hosted a great event at the W Hotel downtown Atlanta. Dixie Pin-up is a photography service that will work with you to create the perfect Pin-up photo shoot.
They provide the props and their knowledge of photography to recreate an authentic pin-up experience.

Check it out at http://www.dixiepinup.com/

The event was a lot of fun and you can see the photos I took there by following this link.
And here is a sample.

I started a new specialized website this week.

http://www.birdsofviningsestates.com

It shows a lot of my pictures of birds I took around the house. So far I got very nice comments from the neighbors. Everybody find it interesting and educational.

Here it is!
I recently received my new printer.
I got a HP Z3200 44 inch photo printer. It took a serious truck to deliver it, the baby weights 380 lbs.

Unpacking was quite an interesting experience.
It took me most of the morning to assemble the different pieces, starting with the stand.

The Printer comes with 6 print heads and 12 ink cartridges, that you can see here in the center.

This booklet contains the instructions for the assembly. All the tools bolts and nuts are provided.

Once the various parts are out of the box, you get to the main part, the core of the printer. Putting this piece on the stand requires the muscles of 2 persons.

Once everything is put together, it’s time to install the ink cartridges, all 12 of them. They are located on each side of the front of the printer.

And the color of those inks are surprising sometime.

Once you plug the printer and turn on the power, the system starts by an entire check and it takes quite a while. The printer has a 80 GB hard drive and some sort of CheckDisk is performed before the printer gets operational.

I will post more comments soon after using the printer.

Many people asked me about that so I will make a little post about it.
Yes I did gave a lecture at Art Institute of Atlanta about photography.
About the business of photography precisely. And it was a lot of fun.
Professor Steve Schaeffer asked some photographers who have been in business for a while to come and talk to his class about the way we conduct business and why we are successful at it. I did just that.
Actually it was a very interactive class with a lot of back and forth questions and discussions.
I hope the students found it interesting. I;m sure that if I were a student I would have found that valuable.

Happy New Year to all the readers of this blog.

I’m back from shooting pictures in Phoenix.
I was lucky to have the opportunity to shoot the exhibit of Chihuly Glass Sculptures in the Phoenix Botanical Garden.

This place is usually very interesting as they do a very good job of educating people about all the plants that you find in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. Add to that some impressive glass sculptures and you have a beautiful shooting opportunity.

The slideshow is coming up online here and the exhibition runs till May, so if you stop by Phoenix dont miss that.

Here is a teaser.

It’s just been a few days since I came back from Switzerland and of course the photos are available online as I write this post.

With the economy worse every day maybe those few images will cheer you up a little as we enter the holiday season. the landscape was unique and it would be an understatement to say that it was beautiful. I also got lucky as it snowed a lot during the few days before I arrived.

The slideshows with the pictures is here.

And I give you a little sample of what I’m talking about.

Here I am again, another trip, to Switzerland this time.
Beside ski which is incredible I got a chance to take a few pictures at night of the village and as I like those I decided to post a few.

Those were all taken at night and without anything else than available light.
Somehow they look like infrared but they are not.

I got a fun assignment lately.
The French American Chamber of Commerce hosted an event to celebrate the release of the Beaujolais nouveau 2008. Traditionally the 3rd thursday of November this new wine of the year is released to the public. It is really not my favorite wine but the event was fun.
I got a chance to take some interesting shots of the restaurant of the Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead (Atlanta) - the Pied de Cochon which is decorated with beautiful colorful crystal chandelier from Murano, Italy and some interesting murals.

The photos are here as a slideshow.

First a little note about technology.
There have been a lot of changes lately on the website. First I changed the hosting company that I’m using. Dreamhost was good but they run into too many problems too frequently so I switched to Media Temple.
So far the support is much better and there has been no incidents. The site tends to be more responsive.
The move was a very complicated task and a good opportunity to do some housekeeping and end up with a better, cleaner installation.

After a long long time without posting on my blog I hope I will finally be able to get back to it.
So look for more post here in the very near future.