Well I’m feeling very refreshed as I’ve just got back from a very relaxing time in the Loire Valley. More specifically Muide Sur Loire, just 2 minutes from Chambord, which is home to the absolutely massive Chateau de Chambord in the above photograph.

I fully intended to photograph this place before we went, I had researched what shots people had done before. You know I basically went on Flickr, Google Images etc. I found theres a massive amount of photo opportunities and I’d be lucky to get to them all. Anyway, on our first full day we went to have a quick look at the area. We decided we’d need to get up early the next day and do a proper visit.

When we arrived the next day we headed straight for the tour, and went inside the Chateau. Full of amazing rooms, and antiques and bedrooms. Anyway, I concentrated mainly on the exterior of the building and using  a 10.5mm fisheye got the above shot, and many others.

I found actually if I switched to my 18-55mm zoom lense I just couldn’t do it justice, so ended up leaving the fisheye attached.One of the shots I’m most happy with, and makes best use of the fisheye capabilities was one taken up the centre of the Double Helix staircase supposedly designed by Leonardo Da Vinci. You can see my wife and son in this shot because i wanted to be able to see the scale of it.

So to say that there isn;t enough hours in the day to photograph that place is an understatement. I didn’t manage to get round much of the grounds, and did consider going back on another day, but it got hot, and all I wanted to do by then was chill by the pool.

Reading ‘Slash’ by The Pool

By the way, while I was chilling I read an excellent book by Slash of Velvet Revolver, formerly Guns N Roses. I must say its the best autobiography I’ve read, and even if your not interested in GNR its a great read, about his amazing life from childhood, forming numerous bands, dancing with ‘Mr Brownstone‘, leaving Guns and now his life today.

Here is a gallery of shots from watching last nights game at the campsite I’m staying at in the Loire Valley. It was great to be able to join in the fun with the ‘Pays Bas’ supporters, our new Dutch friends.

‘Tattoo Two’ is a shot I posted the other week on my Photoblog. It is a shot that I was pretty happy with, and is different from the types of shots that I normally get, although its the sort of thing I’d like to get more of. You see the processing style I have used on this, can only really be used with certain shots. It comes from liking the style of the film ‘300′. You see a while ago I downloaded a preset called Matts 300 Look from Lightroom Killer Tips, and have applied it to a number of shots but unless you’ve got the right subject it doesn’t work. The right subject needs to have the right sort of colour palette aswell. I have used it since, as the basis of the processing, and then clawed back the detail, brightness and played with the curves, and can generally get something good.

When I saw this couple in Bolton I had the processing going on in my head as i was taking the shots. Every shot I got of them was from behind as they were heading into a well known burger place and I wasn’t going to wait for them to come out.

So I’m glad I didn’t get a frontal view as I may have not have considered the rear view. Like I said before I’d like to create more shots like this, but its finding the subjects as you are wandering around town. I guess I’d actually have to set up some sort of photo shoot or go to some sort of convention or festival where you get all sorts of weird and wonderful subjects to photograph.

Processing

So as far as the processing goes, I did most of it in Lightroom, starting off with the ‘Matts 300 Look’ preset. Then like I said I then claw back some detail, brightness and saturation.

So as you can see fairly extensive use of Recovery, Fill Light and Blacks. You get really strong contrast as well as  a high amount of detail when using this style, and its something I use quite a lot, but not always as strongly. You’ll notice that I’ve boosted the vibrance but desaturated overall to -50, theres no real set reason for this, other than I do spend time experimenting with different mixes of the two settings and sometimes the vibrance does give a better feel to the shot. Its easy to over saturate something, and I’m always tweaking saturation levels as it can either make or break the overall effect.

Colours have been desaturated and and as you can see above I’ve only retained the red and orange channels. There are also some slipt toning that has been applied, and that is as it was with the 300 preset.

So after this I export to CS3, resize, sharpen and I think I boosted the overall saturation a bit more too.