During our visit to Sevilla, we have spent nice time on the Plaza de Espana, a spectacular place made in 1929 for the Ibero-American Exhibition. The place is huge (about 49’000 meter square), and the buildings are still in pretty good conditions, with very charming Art-Deco architecture. Today, this is where is the City Hall of Seville (Andalusia, Spain). It’s also a nice location for shooting movies (including Star Wars), so also a nice one for shooting great photo including good portraits! We started the visit with nice sunny conditions, finishing with a rain storm, which made the plaza shining when the sun came back!

All photos were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 16-35mm 2.8 L USM II lens, Canon 24-70mm 2.8 L USM and Canon 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 L USM, treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.3.

More photos of Andalusia, Seville and Spain available on JHGphoto.

For making nice stunning portrait, you need to get a nice lens with fast aperture. The faster you go, the more you blur the background, that’s pretty obvious. Getting portrait with f2.8 is already getting serious, however this is probably not the best you can use to get this stunning portrait you see in magazine cover. Taht’s why I took the Canon 135mm f2 L USM lens, which is a pretty old lens in the Canon line-up, however it’s a fantastic one for many reasons. First, it has the 135mm focal, which is fantastic for making this dynamic portrait where the subject is really a perfect focal for getting your subject really in great relation with the background. The f2 aperture at this focal makes the background even more blurred, with a nice sweet creamy bokeh. And it’s a L lens, so the best Canon can do which is probably meaning one of the best lens in general!

Nic Plugins (recently purchased by Google)

Discussing with people who use it, Nic Plugins collection seems to be a no-brainer if you want to be serious on finalising your photos with this nice “magazine first cover rending”. That’s why I tested it, and I was convinced in few minutes! It takes a bit of time to test the several options, and it makes the process flow a bit longer, but the result is simply stunning and really professional. All the pictures have been treated in Lightroom 4.3, then were treated with several of the Nic Plugins: Sharpner Pro 3.0 (not too much though as the Canon 135mm f2 L is already incredibly sharp!), Viveza 2.0 for the lightning and Color Efex Pro 4.0 for getting the glamourous colors on the photo (however not much neither, as the snow conditions are particular). To be frank, the results out of the 5D MKII and Canon 135mm f2 L were already fantastic, but with the Nic Plugins collection, it gets this little something on top for getting this pro result. I migth put some tutorials or receipts if you’re interested.

St-Cergue in the Snow

This photo shoot session was done few months back, but I had no time to post it before. It was a nice day after a good snowy one, and the temperature was well below 0°C. We went to St-Cergue (Vaud), a ski resort in Jura mountains in Switzerland. There is a nice walk in the mountains with prepared way for walking in the snow. A nice moment in the winter to get a bit of sun and make some nice photos!

All photos were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 135mm f2 L USM, treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.3 and finalised with Nic plugins Sharpner Pro 3.0, Viveza 2.0 and Color Efex Pro 4.0.

I posted few days ago some nice photos Stockholm from a weekend spent in Sweden, and as a free gift I’m giving you 7 free High Definition Wallpapers to download, in 8 different resolution! Feel free to download the HD STockholm wallpapers and let a comment if you like them! It should be large enough to fill your entire 27” screen format of your iMac 27 and the new MacBook Pro 15” Retina! The wallpapers are showing some streets and nice locations in Stockholm. I hope you will enjoy them on your desktop and laptop!

All wallpapers were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 16-35mm 2.8 L USM II lens and Canon 24-70mm 2.8 L USM, treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.2

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More Wallpapers of JHGPhoto available for free download here: Switzerland, Paris, Munich… 

We closed our weekend tour of Stockholm by a visit of Skansen, which is the Swedish Natural museum, and probably one of the most popular place in Sweden. You can see traditional houses, nature and a few nice nordic animals! Very nicely made, it’s a pleasant place to visit and feel the root of Sweden. It’s very accessible and in the middle of Stockholm, so very easy to reach without renting a car! You can get there by bus or by boat! The zoo has many nice animals to see, such as moose, brown bear, lynx, harbour and grey seal, peacock, …  Really nice!

All photos were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 24-70mm 2.8 L USM, all of them treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.2.

All the photos from Stockholm including portrait, City tour, Urban architecture, boat tour and Skansen are availabe here on JHG Photo.

Walking through the streets of Stockholm is really pleasant, as you can see lot of old style and highly modern buildings living alltogether in a very harmonious way. The Swedish way of life is very nice! The urban plannification has been pretty well managed, and it’s a pleasure to visit the city. There are also many things going on, and we even had the opportunity to see the Royal Guard on horses making a parade around Kungsträdgärden, and we also saw a “urban techno rave” in front of the King palace, which was not necessarily planned as they blocked the entire traffic! Nice city!

All photos were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 16-35mm 2.8 L USM II lens and Canon 24-70mm 2.8 L USM, all of them treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.2.

All the photos from Stockholm including portrait, City tour, Urban architecture, boat tour and Skansen are availabe here on JHG Photo.

We spent a couple of days in May in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. What a beautiful modern and elegant city, with a mix of old and highly modern buildings. The city is very interesting to visit, and there are many things to do and to see for an extended weekend. Weather was still very fresh for end of Spring, especially on the boat! What’s really nicea about Stockholm is that you can take a little boat and see the city from the sea chanels that surround the city, and it’s actually a pretty nice and convenient transport to go from one shore to another (our hotel was relatively far from city by bus, but much closer by boat!).

All photos were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 16-35mm 2.8 L USM II lens and Canon 24-70mm 2.8 L USM, all of them treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.2.

All the photos from Stockholm including portrait, City tour, Urban architecture, boat tour and Skansen are availabe here on JHG Photo.

What an interesting experience we had in Algeciras. We went to south of Andalusia to have a see of this beautiful place in Spain, and we landed in the city of Algeciras. Not really many things to do, so we walked a bit and we found a huge land fill in front of the sea, on the opposite shore. We started to shoot some portraits with the Canon 100-400mm L at 400mm focal. I’ve tried to shoot at widest available aperture (5 to 5.6 at longest focal), which still gives interesting bokeh and blurred background, howevest this is not the same as fast 2 or 2.8 aperture. Overall, the long focal makes it very intense with model and background very much merged together. Not necessarily something I’d do all the time, however I think it plays pretty well here, with the Maersk container in the background gently contrasting with the girl model. We had great time making this session. Enjoy!

All photos were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 L USM, all of them treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.2. More portaits here.

More photos and portraits with Canon 100-400mm L USM on JHG Photo.

On the road from Granada to Malaga, we went through the Spanish Sierra Nevada mountain region of Andalusia (Andalucia, Espana), which is a very beautiful region of Spain, with nice landscape (even a forest heart on the mountain!). This was not planned, but we’ve decided to make a nice portrait photo session, on the road, which is a bit in middle of nowhere actually! Few cars, and actually some car manufacturer were testing new models on this road, covering it like a spy car! To make the portrait photos more impactful and spectacular, I’ve chosen the Canon 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 L USM, shooting with telephoto at 400mm focal most of the time on the Canon 5D MKII, as wide open as possible (which in this cas is between 4.5 and 5.6 f/stop). The result is actually very interesting, and probably quite unusual for such type of lens which are mostl used for nature and wild animal photography. This get the background full part of the photo too. I think it gives something very strong to the portait in general, with much stronger perspective in the background, while giving a very nice quality and overall good bokeh. The colors of the place were also very nice, with soft diffused sun light, and I hope you enjoy the portrait session!

All photos were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 L USM, all of them treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.2.

More photos and portraits with Canon 100-400mm L USM on JHG Photo.

During the walk in the Barrage de la Grande Dixence and of the Lac des Dix, in Val d’Hérens, Valais, Switzerland, I’ve been lucky enough to see a chamois from quite far. I’ve approached it to about 50m, shooting with the Canon 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 L USM, which is actually excellent for this kind of photography. At the same time, a stoat (hermine) went out of its hole in the ground and was facing nose to nose with the chamois! This was particularly lucky moment! Enjoy the photos, of which some were cropped in.

All photos were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 L USM, all of them treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.2.

More photos of wild animal and portrait shooting with Canon 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 L USM on JHGPhoto.