Whitstable

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – EF 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/800s f/4 ISO 100 – See-side at Whitstable. As Chiara pointed out – yet another beach without sand. And cold and windy.

Definitely not a hot-spot tourist destination – Whitstable in Eastern Kent is not the first place that comes to mind to spend a rainy and windy Sunday afternoon. Especially when it’s a two hours car ride from home. But we had no plans – and some fresh air could be of use so we accepted the invitation from Christophe and Emilie.

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – EF 40mm f2.8 – 1/25s f/11 ISO 100 – This is what Londoners come to Whitstable for. Seafood and fish, Dover Sole / Turbot / Crab and shellfish for lunch. Some are about the same price as fishmongers in London, but definitely some species we can’t find as well. And as you would hope surely fresh.

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – (left) Chiara reflecting on how she should pose. (right) Un-impressed by the crab. We did dissect the beast and she tasted it but it was more questions than enjoyment.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – EF 40mm f2.8 – 1/125s f/4.5 ISO 800 – Enjoying a relaxing coffee after lunch when you are dad looks like that. To make sure they would not sleep in the car on the way to the beach, nothing works better than a teaspoon of espresso each.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – EF 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/250s f/4 ISO 100 – Both are scared of the waves (as you can see huge here), and water was obviously chilly – so we took no risk no-one was going to get wet.

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – EF 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/160s f/5.6 ISO 250 – Olivier always cold with three layers a scarf and a hat. Eating his coat to show us that we should not stay too long outside.

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – EF 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/320s f/4 ISO 100 – Catching a natural smile with Chiara is like catching a fish jumping out of the water. You need to stay still camera at hand ready to fire for some long minutes and hope she would decide to turn at some point.

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – EF 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/160s f/3.5 ISO 100 – Olivier always as close as possible from his mum, walking on a narrow parapet.

Ambiance Wedding Photography

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/150s f/2.8 ISO 100 – Our top rated non-portrait wedding photograph – taken last year at Cecile and Bruno’s wedding in Provence.

We have been attending – and taking photographs – at 19 friends weddings in the past 10 years (not including ours). Constantly we have improved (and our cameras have as well), meaning the quality of the pictures we gave to our friends have improved as people were getting married older !

Here are a few stats, number of three-starred pictures per wedding –

2004 – 2 pictures (non-digital SLR)
2006 – 2 pictures (EOS 20D)
2007 – 7, 8, 1, 1, 6, 13 pictures (EOS 20D)
2008 – 14, 9 pictures  (EOS 20D)
2009 – 46, 81, 55 pictures  (EOS 5D Mk II)
2010 – 38, 62 pictures  (EOS 5D Mk II)
2012 – 100 pictures  (EOS 5D Mk III)
2013 – 71, 83 pictures (EOS 5D Mk III)

Without reading too much into numbers improvement reached a plateau around 2010, and then people stopped getting married ! Obviously most of those pictures are people portraits. We are fan of close-up portraits and there is no better opportunities than wedding for this.

 

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Canon EOS 20D – 24-70mm f2.8 – 1/200s f/2.8 ISO 400 – Christelle and Stephane wedding close to Barcelona, table with a view.

Weddings are personal, so we did not publish anything on this blog for any of those – pictures were sent to the new couple. However, this is something we have been asking a lot to photographers we interviewed for our wedding – to create a great photo album, one needs more than portraits. We need ambiance shots, close-up of objects / decorations – and as much attention needs to be put into those than photographing people to foster decent results.

And we failed … Surprisingly, out of all the 127 top-rated wedding pics we took – only a handful are non-people pictures, and they are almost all published in this article. I guarantee you – if you are getting married soon (and invite us) – we will pay extra attention to this !

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 24-70mm f2.8 – Location helps. Castle photography at Seb and Hafsa in the south-west of France.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk II – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/50s f/2.8 ISO 3200 – Always challenging food photography – especially deserts as they come after we had too much wine. Chocolate cake at Patrick and Vero’s wedding.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 24-70mm f2.8 – f/2.8 – Attention to details matters. Ambiance shots at Cecile and Bruno’s wedding in the south east of France last year.

A Perfect Start

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/100s f/3.2 ISO 200 – Chiara and Olivier on the 2nd January, wandering in the streets of Barcelonnette. First picture of both of them this year – and very likely one of the last where they are both facing me smiling, without moving.

 

First let me wish everyone a great 2014, a photogenic year full of wonderful shots. I wish we had good excuses for the lack of activity in the past 3 months – but unfortunately nothing less boring than crawling under lot’s of work and very few photo opportunities. Surprisingly the backlog of pictures to go through increased – even so we took very few pictures in the past two months of the year.

So moving backward from January 2014 – we spent a surprisingly warm week in Le Sauze for Chiara skiing debuts – a stressful moment (this is skiing we are talking about here !) she passed with flying colours, showing resilience, envy and perseverance. Olivier was un-impressed by the snow however, and Chiara ended up spending more time on the skis than anyone else during the week !

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – f/3.2 ISO 200 – (left) Skiing under the snow at 9am in the morning, first blue run top to bottom. (right) She is too light and not strong enough to let the steel rope go – meaning trouble at arrival and when falling.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/1000s at f/3.2 ISO 100 – Again in the morning cold, showing off her skills and balance.

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/80s at f/3.2 ISO 100 – Blue Olivier practising snow-walking. He does smile on this shot but this was uncommon unfortunately.

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 40mm f2.8 STM – 1/50s at f/2.8 ISO 100 – Olivier more confident opening up presents back in Marseille. This picture was a tight crop of a much larger picture (about 3 times the size).

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 40mm f2.8 STM – 1/200s at f/2.8 ISO 100 – The princess and her royal court. She does like to be the centre of attention and making her show.