I've just been for three weeks in Vietnam to visit my wife's family in Long Thanh in the South. It was an unforgettable experience, this is my third time in the country and I always like it, the people, the food etc... And obviously the weather was really hot and humid. We stayed in Long Thanh for around two weeks and also went for a swim in Long Hai and stayed in the Swiss Village Resort in Mui Ne, Phan Thiet.

Every thing was an excuse for taking pictures. I took with me my mini Polaroid PoGo printer which the kids enjoyed a lot. Having their pictures printed out instantly was exciting for them.

As a tradition between my wife and I, we are always doing jumping shots anywhere we are going :-D And this time was no exception and it was contagious.

For more details about the shot above, please have a look at its Flickr page. Also check out this other photographs of me against my wife.

More photographs from the series can be found on my Facebook fan page.

2009 is ending soon. It was for me a wonderful year and I hope it was for you all as well. I've met new wonderful people some of which are now friends, I've learned and shared new techniques but I need now to spend more time with my wife and visit old friends.

For all who do celebrate Christmas, my wife and I wish you all to spend a wonderful Christmas time with your family and friends. For those who don't celebrate, we wish you to enjoy this end of the year and have a great party for this new coming year.

This is my last post of the year, and I hope 2010 will give me more time to update my blog more regularly than I did in the past 12 months. I see you all in 2010 for an even more wonderful photographic year.

I started to use off-camera flash in my photography works back in 2007. At the time I used to photograph everything with available natural light, playing around with reflectors and finding angles that would match the ambient light. But then I started to learn using a flashgun in a proper way and became addicted to the fact that having a flashgun in your bag makes it your own available light that you can carry with you where ever you go and use it whenever you need it. But as exciting as it is when you start to get nice balanced shots, you tend to go all the way with flash only and forget the natural light. Don't forget that lighting with flash is not The way but just A way to light your image. So recently I forced myself to include natural light shots in my sessions.

I've recently been contacted by several photographers, including Tony Kieu, my cousin in Australia, wanting to start taking photograph of models but just don't know where to start with. As most of us at the beginning, they started to take portraits asking their wife or a family members to pose for them, then, after a little (or big) while both parties can sometimes start to loose interest and the photographer just wants to get into something more challenging: photographing a model.

Taking pictures of a friend, of your wife or of a family member is something easy. It's a person you're going on well with so it's easier to be open and do some crazy things. Meeting and photographing a stranger is something else. For a lot of photographers it can be a really big challenge which can get worse with the time if they don't make the jump and try it.

Hopefully, with the help of the Internet, you can prepare and liaise with models online which makes it easier to arrange a meetup for a photo session.

China and Vietnam are sharing the same lunar calendar and astrology (except for the rabbit which is a cat in Vietnam). The Ox is going to govern this year starting on the 26th of January.

The Vietnamese New Year or Spring Festival, also called Tết, is the most important of our traditional holidays. It's the time for all the family to gather together around lovely food, forget about all the bad things that happened last year and start a new one in a happy atmosphere. It is believed that what ever happen on the beginning of the year is likely to be repeated throughout the year, so everyone tries to be happy, put any anger or bad feeling aside that's why kids are excited as they can do what ever they want (or nearly) without being reproved by their parents. They can also eat a lot of those lovely dried fruits and receive Lì Xì lucky red envelopes containing money, I wish I was a kid again :-P

This year, as every year, the London Chinatown Chinese Association has organized a celebration of the Chinese New Year in Centre London. There were traditional dances, songs, Lion dances etc... From Trafalgar Square to Soho, all the streets were very busy and full of colours.

I've been living in London since June 2006. By September/October 2006, if memory serves, I've joined the Ealing & Hampshire House Photography Society (EHHPS) after Googling for some camera club in my area. The club exists for quite some years now and meets every Thursday evening at 8pm at the Ealing Town Hall. There are two competitions per month, one print and one digital and we usually socialise in a pub nearby after each meeting.

After a little while I've joined few other clubs and groups such as the LPMG and the London Strobist group.

Joining a camera club is very useful and fun. It allows you to show your work and see the ones from other photographers. This is great as you can discuss ones technique and learn from that. Competitions from photographic societies are interesting, having good or bad marks does not always mean that your picture is a wow or a crap, but it helps with understanding and improving your skills in some areas.

Christmas is a wonderful period where everyone is thinking of all their beloved. I think a lot of people, even if they are not catholic, are enjoying that date. It's not only because it is a bank holidays but also for the atmosphere and an opportunity to be with the family remembering every good things that happened in the year.

For people like me, far away from the family and that are not able to go back home, friends are the family.

I wish you all to spend a wonderful Christmas time in your family or among your friends, enjoy the good time together eating nice food and giving out meaningful presents.

May you end 2008 in joy and happiness and may 2009 bring you even more!

Last week David Hobby came to London to give us a great seminar about off-camera flash photography using small and portable flashguns (speedlights). For this occasion the London Strobist group had organized a meetup at The Flash Centre. David was supposed to attend but he caught a stomach bug. We did have the presence of Neil Turner and Drew Gardener & Lucinda.

The seminar was held twice, one on Saturday and again on Sunday at ULU by Euston (Central London). David went thru the basics of his popular off-camera flash techniques followed by a demonstration with some of us. At the end of the day, Peter from California Sunbounce offered a Sunbounce Micro-Mini as a price for the winner which was selected by elimination on tossing a coin. Guess who was the lucky guy? ...me! That was awesome, I was so pleased as you can imagine.

I'm a member of the Ealing and Hampshire House Photographic Society (EHHPS) since the end of 2006, few months after I've moved to London from Montpellier (in the South of France).

The EHHPS is a local camera club near Ealing Broadway station. We have our weekly meeting every Thursday evenings from 8:00pm to 10:00pm in a room at the Ealing Town Hall. There is two competition every month: the Print Competition and the Digital Image Competition, and once a year the club is organizing a Panel of Print Competition which requires from the members to present a panel composed of a minimum of 3 and up to 6 printed photographs telling a story or within a theme.

At last year competition, I got the second place with my painting with light panel that you can see on my Flickr account: "My friend of light".

This year competition was held few hours ago. I presented with a new panel of 3 of my jumping shots taken earlier this year. The other panels were very good and to my surprise... I won! Oh yeah baby! The first place plus a trophy. That was so cool, I was really happy :-)

The competition was judged by Kevin Herbert.

Computer virii are a real threat to us photographers as they can crash your computer or delete hard drive content. You sometime need to completely re-install your PC in order to regain useability. This Sunday I discovered that my PC was infected by several virii while I was away in Norway. My wife must have been accessing infected websites or emails. But all attempts to access any website were redirected to another one. Windows has also detected the infection and so was my antivirus but it was already too late and the virus has downloaded several other ones including Rootkit and Trojans. I was very concerned as I did not want to go thru all the process of reinstalling my computer and risk the lost of recent work.

So after 2 days analysing the situation and running all sort of antivirus and spyware removal tools I've been able to regain a stable system.