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 […] Continue Reading >>>

Having been a user of Facebook for sometime now, I’ve been fiddling with creating my own Rowles Media Page on there. Just because I can. Its been there for a while now, and I’m just wondering how I can best use it. I mean since facebook is so popular with something like 70 million users world wide, then it seems that not having a facebook page is a bad idea. Its getting it noticed that is the problem.

As you can see I have 8 fans at the moment, which means whenever there is activity on my Facebook Page, it […] Continue Reading >>>

Well up until today I have been running three seperate websites. A Photoblog, a regular Blog and my main business website. I realised that things would be much easier to manage if I could at least merge two of them. So the business website has become part of the blog. Or vice versa, either way my main website is now powered by Wordpress. 

Galleries
In the change to this new site I have temporarily lost some of my galleries of photographic work. So I am currently looking into the best solution to that, because I seem to have that many of […] Continue Reading >>>