Today’s guest post is by Julien Hautcoeur (Web | Facebook | Tumblr). Click on images for larger view:
I am a French engineer, I grew up in front on the Atlantic Ocean in Brittany. It is a really beautiful place with amazing landscapes (and food). I was playing with the Minolta camera of my dad when I was a kid but I mainly learned everything I know about photography during the last 2 years after moving to Canada. I had the chance to come and live in Ottawa with enough free time to visit a lot of Canadian areas and the United States. I came in June 2011 with a D700 and 24-70 + 14-24 that I just bought. It’s my first full frame camera, I was using a D300 before it for 2 years. This equipment followed me everywhere during my north american adventure (and when I go back to Europe). It is heavy but I’m young and I don’t spend my money to leave my camera at home.
There is a big culture difference between north America and Europe. So for me, almost everything was new. Even I saw most of those places in movies, when you are there for real, it’s a huge difference, you are in the movie and you don’t want to forget it when you come back home. As I was discovering those places and in particularly the big cities, I realized that I should be fast to take pictures, I should quickly react to the coming actions. I also realized that people quickly see you with your big camera and lens. So, I learnt to be as discreet as possible, first to respect the people and then to catch the scene. It’s not so easy, sometimes it’s just impossible.
We had so many improvements in photography during the last 10 years, we now have access to premium cameras and lenses. We are very lucky to have the possibility to bring back amazing high quality pictures from our trips quite easily. I constantly look at my old pictures to see my mistakes and evaluate my improvements. I’m not a professional photographer so I don’t have pressure when I’m shooting but I want to get the best of my D700. I learned everything by myself, looking at others photographers in books or on Internet.
So, I wanted to share with you some pictures organized in series called World Views. In this series, I try to match some pictures from the same place to create an atmosphere. It’s a very interesting exercise to do, and it’s not easy. I think this gives a little bit more power to some pictures, or tell a story.
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