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This Sunday I returned from the oh-too-short trip to Paris, and now I can post the last pictures from the “City of Lights”. I found it very unpleasant that the weather was great while I was in a meeting room and got bad when I started to roam the city.

However – wind, cold and occasional rains didn’t stop me from using the camera to try to capture Paris in autumn. This being my third time in Paris I was more looking to roam the streets and just enjoy a stroll. Enjoy the photo gallery!

Some of the highlights of the trip:

• taking a walk in Quartier Latin, and people-watching while sitting at a cafe
• browsing 3 art galleries (from the countless present) in St Germain quarter
• visiting St Denis basilica, the burial place of French monarchy
• Chateau de Vincennes, with it’s interesting fortress – which was used to “house” (read: imprison) the Marquis de Sade amongst others (this was before the Bastille became the lodging place for important prisoners)
• a short visit to the Quai de Branly museum, which houses current art from Africa or Asia and also temporary exhibitions ( I went to a ‘photography from Iran’)

This is the second post in the series about sights in China which I did not have the time to write about when I was still in there. The first post was  Along the Great Wall – a description of that trip and a photo gallery.

Today the theme is the Forbidden City – with it’s countless palaces and gardens. This huge area contains a huge number of beautiful buildings and squares, a lot still not open to the public. Some of the smaller palaces have little museums opened inside (like the jade or bronze museums). The main series of palaces and courtyards – following the north-south axis – is the focus and highway for tourists, but the buildings on the east and west sides are also impressive. At the north entrance there is a beautiful garden complex – complete with rock formations, ponds and small wooden buildings.

You can find 50 more photos in this post.

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As you are probably accustomed already, I try to upload from time to time a new photo album to Picasa and here.

This time there is a mix of photos from New York, Rome and Toledo included. And even one picture from Bucharest. There is no particular connection between all of them, just the fact that I liked them and wanted to share the album with you. So enjoy and have a nice week.

I finally managed to setup my laptop to also use my Philips LCD, and Lightroom is pretty happy with this change. Now I can enjoy multi-monitor features – and the truth is that it is a pretty nice improvement. I still have to test how Photoshop works with this change, but I am pretty sure there will be also an improvement.

As a test to see how this change my way of working, I fired up Lightroom and processed a few more photos. They are the ones in this post. I hope you like them – and consider them some kind of Easter present. How could I not post something today?

On another note – but still related to photography – I am shopping for a new hard drive. My trusty WD which was intended as backup drive became main working copy, and now I have no backup. I really hope I have no hard drive failure in the next week. Because of this, I also checked Lightroom catalog to see how many photos I have catalogued. By the last count I have 47k photos, give or take a few thousands. I intend to do a special post – or maybe a virtual gallery – once I reach the 50k milestone.

And now, enjoy the photos.

Today brings a new set of photos that I just finished to post-process. I know that I should probably just upload one huge set and then let you enjoy them, but remember that the blog name is “bits and bobs”. So you get photo bits every day

I am considering of starting a special page based on the concept of “Photo a day”. What do you think? Each day I upload one new photo.

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Today I added a few photos to Picasa gallery.

They are very different from the photos I usually upload – these are heavily processed in Adobe Lightroom. I hope you find them interesting. Some are different interpretations from the black and white gallery I uploaded last night. I think some look better in black and white, and some better differently processed. Of course, one of the beauty of Lightroom and post processing is that you can get as many variations as you wish.

Enjoy! 

Take one part Lightroom, one part beer and one part playfulness and the results might be surprising. This evening, bored of hostels, reviews, train schedules and other plannings I decided to experiment a bit. Some of the results might be ‘too much’, but keep in mind that I was in the ‘what does this slider do’ mood.

All of the photos below were taken in color, but the power of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom post processing leaves no pixel unturned.