Dominique’s old stones (mostly)

[Blue439]

I am jealous of your access to those wonderful old buildings. Everything around me is so darned new. There are only a few buildings left in this town that date back to the 1800s.

The good news is, all of it is just a few hours’ flight away... and you could even surprise yourself and like the life here in Europe... A few days ago there was this story in the news about some American girl athlete who was amazed to discover the existence and quality of free healthcare at the Polyclinic of the Olympic Village in Paris, and took the opportunity to have a full medical and dental check-up...

 

[Blue439]

Thanks guys for your visits and kind comments.

Today’s photo is about a giant Romanesque cathedral built in the middle of nowhere, on an island between mainland France and the Mediterranean Sea (nowadays, it is a peninsula reachable by road). Truly a monument out of one of those role-playing fantasy games we used to play, like the Ultima or Might & Magic series. The bishopric of Maguelone was created there in 533, no one really knows why, as the place is really completely out of the way. To defend against the raids of Muslim Barbaresque pirates, the cathedral that we can still see today was built like a fortress from 1030, on the ruins of the previous one from the 6th century, of which nothing remains. When he visits the island in 1096, Pope Urbanus II declares the recently completed cathedral “second only to the basilica in Rome”. Although largely amputated throughout the centuries, Maguelone remains an extremely impressive and atmospheric monument: visit it once, remember it all your life.

Photo of 2010, Nikon D3, Nikkor 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 G lens.

 

[Blue439]

I am always happy to present my beloved “old stones”, of course, and most of the time I have to make a conscious effort not to expand too much on the contextual or historical information I provide, lest I bore my audience... Enthusiasts in any field are like that. Yet, and in spite of my fondness for this “Heritage photography”, as I like to call it, and of the fact that I know quite a few of those photos are very nice indeed, I must admit that the ones that make me the most proud are the tabletop ones I take with artificial lighting.

In Heritage photograph, I photograph the world as it is. I don’t create much—I reproduce what I see as faithfully as possible. In tabletop photography, I get to photograph my world as I make it to be.

In that process, you can really believe you’re God (albeit on a slightly smaller scale, admittedly) for a moment. It’s just like Genesis: at the beginning, there is darkness. And indeed, after you set up your product, or still life elements, or whatever composition it is you’re shooting, you take a first exposure with all the flashes off, and that photo must come out pitch black: in other words, you have set up your camera so that none of the light remaining in the studio or coming from the outside will be sufficient to create any amount of illumination in your frame (read: pollute it). All the light that will ever shine on that scene will be your creation, and yours only. Then —Let There Be Light!— you switch on the flashes and take another exposure. And from then on, you adjust and balance the light sources, insert modifiers, replace them, take them away set up white cards, or black cards... until you’re satisfied and you take the final photograph, lit just the way you wanted it.

It can’t be denied that there is a lot more work in tabletop photography: first there is the setting up of all the elements that will compose your own “landscape”, and that requires imagination and patient care; and then, there’s the whole lighting and shooting part. If the result looks good, you can truly be proud of yourself because you’ve achieved it all by yourself from a blank page. When you come back with a great photo of a stupendous Romanesque church, you’ve had a tremendous amount of help from all those genius architects and masons and stone cutters and sculptors of long ago! All you have to do, basically, if pay them homage and showcase their work in your best natural light and in a way that respects the perspective and makes the stones sing as they were made to all those centuries ago...

Thank you and congratulations to those of you who managed to follow me through all those ramblings. Here, have a drab of 16-year old Lagavulin to straighten you up!

Nikon Z7, F-mount Micro-Nikkor 60mm ƒ/2.8 macro lens, FTZ adapter.

 

[Dawg Pics]

The good news is, all of it is just a few hours’ flight away... and you could even surprise yourself and like the life here in Europe... A few days ago there was this story in the news about some American girl athlete who was amazed to discover the existence and quality of free healthcare at the Polyclinic of the Olympic Village in Paris, and took the opportunity to have a full medical and dental check-up...

I have no doubt I would like it there, free healthcare and all, but I am anchored to the states via a husband. If I choose to travel, it would be on my own. I am pretty independent, but I don't know if I am that independent.
I love when people from other countries join this forum because I get to see life in other places.

 

[Blue439]

[...] I am anchored to the states via a husband. [...]

That sounds like a sensible anchor! To say nothing of the dawgs, of course.

I will try to show you life in France and other European countries through my photos, then.

Talking about European countries, how about a short trip to Rome, Italy? This is a photo of Saint Peter’s I took in 2012. To have this view of the basilica, you have to get into Castel Sant’ Angelo, walking half a mile from inside the Vatican via the secret passage known as the “Passetto” (re-read your Dan Brown if you need to be briefed on the subject), which is the shortest way on foot. Of course, to be there to shoot at night, you need to have been authorized to set foot, first inside Saint Peter’s at night, then inside Castel Sant’ Angelo at night, not to mention climb on top of its keep... but in Rome, that sort of thing can be arranged if you know the right people.

Shot on a tripod with a Nikon D3S and a Nikkor 70-200mm ƒ/2.8 II G lens.

 

[Dawg Pics]

Very nice image. Thank you for the European tour. I will be following your thread.
Vatican? Secret Passage? DaVinci Code? Do you know the Pope?
Sorry for the lack of eloquence, I am tired. I am lucky to write a simple sentence right now.

 

[hark]

Thank you for your kind words. Regarding the technical data, this was taken with a ....

If you are reading Nikonites with a PC or Mac browser, you might want to consider adding the EXIFY add-on to your browser. When you hover over an image, the EXIF will display. But thank you for mentioning the capture details!

And welcome to Nikonites.

 

[Blue439]

Very nice image. Thank you for the European tour. I will be following your thread.
Vatican? Secret Passage? DaVinci Code? Do you know the Pope?
Sorry for the lack of eloquence, I am tired. I am lucky to write a simple sentence right now.

Thank you for your image. Don’t worry about eloquence, and I hope you do feel better soon.

I wasn’t thinking about The DaVinci Code, but rather Angels and Dæmons, which Brown published a couple of years before and which I recommend, it is a fun and (at least partly) educating read. And more personal, unlike The DaVinci Code for which he purloined most of the material from the 1982 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh. I had read that hugely entertaining (and quite original, even though of course the world now knows that everything about the so-called Priory of Sion was a fake from the get-go) book in the 1980s, and therefore I wasn’t at all surprised, 15 years later, to read the developments in The DaVinci Code: I knew how it would end. Anyway, if you want to know about the behind-the-scenes in the Vatican (albeit a very romanticized version of it), you should read that book, it is good entertainment. Utterly un-believable of course, but it’s like Star Wars: once you get into it, you swallow the whole thing!

The secret passage, known as the Passetto (literally, “the little passage” in Italian) does exist, I walked it at night (I have photos to prove it! ). It runs, completely hidden from the streets below (and when needed to hide it from buildings, it is covered by a stone roof), atop a former sheet wall between the Vatican and the enormous Mediæval fortified castle of Castel Sant’ Angelo, almost a kilometer away. It begins behind a nondescript door right next to Saint Peter’s basilica in the Vatican and was used twice by Popes (Alexander VI in 1494 and Clement VII in 1527) to escape invading armies and seek refuge in the impregnable Castel Sant’ Angelo.

I cannot pretend to know the current Pope, but I had the honor of being introduced to him, for what it’s worth. Not a big deal, it happens to thousands of people every year. I knew slightly better Pope Karol, whom I was lucky enough to meet three times, once almost in private (we were three people with him). I have never met a more striking and charismatic person than him in my whole life.

And especially for you, and so that you don’t think I am making empty promises, here is a photo of the Passetto at night, in its covered part! Not so very impressive, hey? Well, remember it is a secret passage, so it’s above all supposed to go unnoticed...

Nikon D3S, Nikkor 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 E ED VR lens, Nikon SB–900 flash in TTL mode on the camera. 1/60 sec., ƒ/8, ISO 640.

 

[Blue439]

If you are reading Nikonites with a PC or Mac browser, you might want to consider adding the EXIFY add-on to your browser. When you hover over an image, the EXIF will display. But thank you for mentioning the capture details!

And welcome to Nikonites.

Thanks Hark, I will look into it but I please understand that I make no promises... Every site has this gizmo they’d like you to add, and every forum has that other one, and you soon find yourself with a bloated browser that runs slow because you tried to accommodate everyone... I see your point, but I’m already providing the most important data, I hope...

 

[Blue439]

To continue our Roman trip, this is a photo, well a snapshot really, which is technically not good at all (this sort of reportage or “street photography” is not at all my thing) but does manage to capture, maybe, an interesting ambience: in Saint Peter’s basilica, on the threshold of the immense nave, a nun stands immobile, like she is stricken by the “divine light” that falls down from the high windows of the cupola that sits over the transept crossing... All the while, and completely oblivious to the beauty of the instant, boorish, or simply uncaptivated tourists stroll around with empty gazes, so that our nun has the moment all for herself and her God... and the casual but respectful observer that I was.

I was lucky enough to have this photo used as the main feature on the cover page of the official Vatican website for about three months, back in 2012. I took it on my saint’s day (August 8), so maybe Saint Dominique made me a favor on that day!


Nikon D3S, Nikkor 14-24mm ƒ/2.8 G, handheld. 1/60 sec., ƒ/3.2, ISO 500.

 

[Clovishound]

Thanks Hark, I will look into it but I please understand that I make no promises... Every site has this gizmo they’d like you to add, and every forum has that other one, and you soon find yourself with a bloated browser that runs slow because you tried to accommodate everyone... I see your point, but I’m already providing the most important data, I hope...

You probably know this but just for clarity, as long as you have the metadata in your image file, which the ones you posted do, others with a browser add on can read the data about your photo. For example, the photo you posted above was shot at 19mm on 08/08/2012 at 17:49:56, focus at infinity, no flash, auto white balance, matrix metering, and program exposure mode, as well as the info you provided.

What the add on does is to allow you to see the metadata for images others have posted. Most of us here use one, there are several out there, as a tool to easily see info about images that interest us. If you don't want others to see that info, just check the "copyright only" box in LR when exporting the image file. If you want to see other's data, install an add on to your browser.

A lot of us use Exify, it only requires that you hover the mouse pointer over the image and the bare bones info magically appears in a banner at the bottom of the image.

Exify

Another popular add on is xlFr. It requires right clicking on the image and choosing "View EXIF data". It requires an additional 2 clicks to use, but provides a lot more info on the image than Exify does.

xlFr

Obviously, it's your choice whether to use one of these add-ons. It's just another tool, not all tools are a good fit for everyone.

 

[Blue439]

You probably know this but just for clarity, as long as you have the metadata in your image file, which the ones you posted do, others with a browser add on can read the data about your photo. [...]

Roger that, that's good. I have always used KUSO EXIF Viewer, personally.

 

[Dawg Pics]

Thank you for your image. Don’t worry about eloquence, and I hope you do feel better soon.

I wasn’t thinking about The DaVinci Code, but rather Angels and Dæmons, which Brown published a couple of years before and which I recommend, it is a fun and (at least partly) educating read. And more personal, unlike The DaVinci Code for which he purloined most of the material from the 1982 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh. I had read that hugely entertaining (and quite original, even though of course the world now knows that everything about the so-called Priory of Sion was a fake from the get-go) book in the 1980s, and therefore I wasn’t at all surprised, 15 years later, to read the developments in The DaVinci Code: I knew how it would end. Anyway, if you want to know about the behind-the-scenes in the Vatican (albeit a very romanticized version of it), you should read that book, it is good entertainment. Utterly un-believable of course, but it’s like Star Wars: once you get into it, you swallow the whole thing!

The secret passage, known as the Passetto (literally, “the little passage” in Italian) does exist, I walked it at night (I have photos to prove it! ). It runs, completely hidden from the streets below (and when needed to hide it from buildings, it is covered by a stone roof), atop a former sheet wall between the Vatican and the enormous Mediæval fortified castle of Castel Sant’ Angelo, almost a kilometer away. It begins behind a nondescript door right next to Saint Peter’s basilica in the Vatican and was used twice by Popes (Alexander VI in 1494 and Clement VII in 1527) to escape invading armies and seek refuge in the impregnable Castel Sant’ Angelo.

I cannot pretend to know the current Pope, but I had the honor of being introduced to him, for what it’s worth. Not a big deal, it happens to thousands of people every year. I knew slightly better Pope Karol, whom I was lucky enough to meet three times, once almost in private (we were three people with him). I have never met a more striking and charismatic person than him in my whole life.

And especially for you, and so that you don’t think I am making empty promises, here is a photo of the Passetto at night, in its covered part! Not so very impressive, hey? Well, remember it is a secret passage, so it’s above all supposed to go unnoticed...

Nikon D3S, Nikkor 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 E ED VR lens, Nikon SB–900 flash in TTL mode on the camera. 1/60 sec., ƒ/8, ISO 640.

View attachment 408666

That is pretty awesome. Thanks so much for posting it and all of the background information. John Paul, II made a stop in New Orleans in the 1980s, but I had moved out of state by then.
I will check out the book you recommended.

 

[Blue439]

In France you can buy a Mediæval castle, sometimes for very little money —but of course, there will probably be a lot of repairs, then— and pretend to live the life of the local lord. Not a Disneyland recreation, but the genuine thing from the 13th century. Guy Baudat, who made a small fortune with a chain of bakeries in the 1970s, acquired Châteaubrun after he sold his stores in 1986 and fancied himself into a would-be sculptor and potter. The place is not open to the public, except during the Heritage Days in September but I was invited to visit it in 2012.

Nikon D3S, Nikkor 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 G lens. I don’t mention any more detailed info since according to Hark above, you guys can visualize the EXIF if you feel so inclined.

 

[Blue439]

I have always been fond of the photo I am uploading today, because of what I, at least, regard as a form of “un-reality”: the watch seems somehow suspended in space, because you cannot tell whether it is resting on its side or on its back... I have an eerie feeling of vertigo every time I look at it. To be honest, I must admit that, even though I did intend to shape the light to try and achieve something of the kind, I was very lucky in the way it turned out... Maybe I did receive some help from The Great Assistant in the Sky that day!

This is my trusty Citizen watch, the best sports/everyday watch in the world —wouldn’t exchange it for a Rolex, and I know what I’m talking about, I had one! It was taken almost six years ago in August 2018 with a D850, months before I made the (initially reluctant) switch to mirrorless cameras.

Nikon D850, Micro-Nikkor 60mm ƒ/2.8 G macro lens, Gitzo tripod, Arca-Swiss Cube C1 geared head, flash lighting.

 

[Blue439]

The seaside village of Cefalù, Sicily, August 2008. Nikon D3, Nikkor 70-200mm ƒ/2.8 G VR lens.

 

[Blue439]

As I think I mentioned before, my specialty in heritage photography is Romanesque and pre-Romanesque churches. The age of the Romanesque being, roughly, between 1000 and 1200, it is of course part of the Middle Ages. In June of this year (2024), the French city of Lyon, near which I live, hosted a worldwide, one-week seminar that would be the equivalent of the G7 Summit for Mediævalists: once a year, they congregate from all over the world to discuss highly specialized and arcane topics, and this year, the venue was Lyon. It also happens that one of my friends from the US, a University professor emerita of Mediæval art history, was invited to participate and give a speech during that week-long seminar. On one of her free days, we arranged to meet and I drove her down to the Drôme region, a one-hour drive from Lyon, to see a couple of Romanesque churches she did not already know. The trip went well, we had a nice lunch in a typical French village, and she was ecstatic at being able to buy fresh fruit and produce from a little roadside vendor whom I knew had an excellent reputation.

Anyway, this is one of the photos I took in the church of Chantemerle-les-Blés (can’t find a more poetic and bucolic name!). It doesn’t show much, but I like it because I think it describes well what I call “The Light of the Romanesque”, a special kind of light (I think!) that plays so well on the old stones and sometimes, when one is lucky, makes them sing for you...

Technically, it was not easy because of the enormous dynamic range between the brightest and the darkest parts. The Z7 II has a splendid dynamic range of 14.7 EVs at the base ISO value of 64 (an iconic number for me as it was the sensitivity of my beloved Kodachrome, back in the film days), the best there is, to my knowledge, unless you hit medium format which has other downsides. That dynamic range is the reason I was not interested in acquiring a Z8 or Z9, as those otherwise great cameras would have been less good than the Z7 II in that domain that is key for me. However, there was too much contrast here even for the Z7 II’s sensor and I played it safe by taking two exposures which I then composited in Photoshop.

Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor Z 100-400mm ƒ/4.5–5.6 VR S lens. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.

 

[Blue439]

The cliffs of Cap Canaille (literally, Cape Scoundrel ) on the Mediterranean coast near Marseille, are the tallest in France: almost 400 meters high.

Nikon D3, Nikkor 70-200mm ƒ/2.8 VR II lens, handheld.

 

[Needa]

This image I had to open in a color matched program to get the true feel of it my web browser didn't do it justice.

Technically, it was not easy because of the enormous dynamic range between the brightest and the darkest parts. The Z7 II has a splendid dynamic range of 14.7 EVs at the base ISO value of 64 (an iconic number for me as it was the sensitivity of my beloved Kodachrome, back in the film days), the best there is, to my knowledge, unless you hit medium format which has other downsides.

Almost as good as the 810/850 at 14.8 at 64 ISO.

 

[Blue439]

This image I had to open in a color matched program to get the true feel of it my web browser didn't do it justice.

Thank you for the effort, I appreciate it. I use a color-calibrated monitor (Eizo ColorEdge), and even though I try to minimize the damage done by the JPEG compression by keeping the quality at 100 percent, there is discernible deterioration versus the TIFF file that comes out of Photoshop when I’m finished with it. Then, of course, web sites such as Flickr, or probably this forum, use algorithms that also compress and resize without telling you exactly what they do, and this has consequences on the image quality as well.

Almost as good as the 810/850 at 14.8 at 64 ISO.

Indeed, that’s why I never resold my D850! That said, the added optical benefits we get from the Z mount outweigh that 0.1 EV difference, in my opinion. For me, there will most likely be no going back to the DSLRs of yesterday. The only lenses in the F-mount lineup that measure up to the Z-mount primes are, once again in my opinion, the three tilt-shifts, because of their very special construction. In addition to the Holy Trinity, I used to work with all the best primes in the F mount, not to mention a couple of Zeiss (15mm, 135mm) and even one Sigma (the 135mm Art), and having experienced what the Z-mount primes produce, I have re-sold them all without regret.

At this time, in the F mount, I only keep a 58mm, manual focus Voigtländer Nokton and the Micro-Nikkor 60mm which is great to reproduce flat items on my copy stand. I think I have resold all the others. So, technically, I could still use the D850 (and the D3 and D3S which I also still have), but not with a very wide range of lenses...