Michel Engelen: La douce France, 2011 edition

It's that time again, I'll annoy you with some pics from our yearly trip to the south of France...

The light is different over there, in the mountain area it's only slightly so because of the altitude i guess but near the sea it's definitely different in color temperature and spectrum, i see a lot of warmer tones, orange & pink are rendered much better, ideal for skin-tones i would say.
Bur we are not here to shoot models this time, we're here to relax and enjoy our stay.

First picture was taken from the small village of St-Croix, you can see the lac de St-Croix with it's amazing color and the Gorges du Verdon in the back (left side)

Nikon Af-s 24-70 with Circular polarizer

This is from the village Saint-Paul de Vence, if you want to create depth in an image try including some elements in the foreground said the book, so i did give it a try
Af-d 50mm @ f:2.0

The old city of Antibes (near Cannes)

And the covered Mediterranean market of Antibes

Oh my, Mojito time!

This is what i mean when talking about better color temperature

Fréjus coastline taken form the Jardin Bonaparte (St-Raphaël)

the Jardin Bonaparte (St-Raphaël)

The harbors are always amazing to visit, it's decadent to see how much money some people own :-p

Between all that luxury a fisherman's working horse

After comming here for years i tried something more abstract, you can still tell this was taken in a warm place with palm trees, don't you?

I was ready to photograph the firework, but because of a big storm they launched the firework early, too early, i was still at the restaurant, everything was set to take pictures so i photographed some other firework.
A pretty violent thunderstorm, the cloud hang so low it had a hard time passing by because of the Alps in the north