A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog

Looking for boats on an island that isn't one
August 17, 2008
I recently felt a need for the company of boats. I was longing for the discreet dancing motion of vessels in a harbour, the sound of halyards flapping in the wind, the gentle splashing of water against hulls, the various ocean-tainted smells of fish and diesel and paints and fiberglass and cleaners, the squeaking of floating wooden docks, the screaming seagulls circling returning trawlers, the hissing chatter of VHF radios, the notion that each and every boat present has...
Shadowbox implemented
August 14, 2008
Inspired by a post on the Turning Gate, I've decided to give the good old Lightbox 2 and Greybox scripts a break and am now testing Shadowbox as the engine for all slideshows and web links on this blog. So far, the new script seems to be performing as well, if not better than the others and offers the added convenience of handling all media under one roof (I previously had to use Lightbox for images and Greybox for web pages.)As usual, all images in an entry can be click...
Of skies and a runaway sun
When seeking peace inside and longing to settle the chaos outside, a West-Ender needs look no further than the Seawall. (I sound like a bloody advertisement, but it's true.) Flowers greet me at the bottom of the tower and follow me down a quarter of a block to Alexandra Park where the wooden gazebo thrones over a parterre of green grass and a neat row of more flowers lined up against Beach Avenue, which I cross and arrive on the Seawall, 3 minutes and 23 seconds after le...
A Time Will Come...
August 10, 2008
When patience finally pays off, when the many fruits of a long labor are ripe, when sweet rewards fall from the sky like rain on a hot summer day, when distance is abolished and life becomes simple and fluid, when sunsets turn into sunrises, dusk into dawn, when regulations and bureaucracy return to the dark stinky closet they should never leave. In the meantime we push on, always forward, without resting, somehow breathless but teeth clenched, tired but ever so resolut...
Abe is dead, long live Abetoo
Abe was my first DSLR. She was a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (or 400D). Her name was a short for "Aberration chromatique", the French for, yes, you guessed it, chromatic aberration. Of which she didn't suffer that much, but wasn't totally free either. She succeeded to my trusted Canon G3 and has taken amazing pictures. For reference, Utah was shot with the G3, South Africa and most of my HDR with Abe. I loved them dearly.A month ago, on a plane from Newark to Vanco...
Better World Books - The plug
August 6, 2008
Once in a while I run into something I really like, a service, a product, a piece of software, a recipe, a movie, something. And then I plug it. Not for the rewards, not for the fame, not for attention but just because I think a compliment costs me nothing and goes a long way. So the opinions expressed hereby are mine solely and most likely biased. After all, I'm from the south of France where objectivity is often replaced by passionate enthusiasm and colorful language. ...
Low tide, after noon - The Seawall
August 3, 2008
Today I took Abe Second Generation around Stanley Park looking for wildlife. On Saturdays, the Seawall is almost like the beaches of Coney Island and I figured the only thing that wouldn't yield hurriedly to the crowd was marine life. I had starfish in mind. I came back with something else, entirely.As soon as I got to English Bay, I realized this was an exceptionally low tide. Hundreds of feet of shoreline had been left exposed and a billion mussels were roasting placid...
Fired up
August 2, 2008
It happens once a year on English Bay. It claims to be the largest offshore display of its kind. It attracts 300,000 to 400,00 spectators a night, four times over two weeks. It is said to cost way over a million dollars to produce, a good share of which comes out of the city's pockets - the same pockets that could be feeding and housing the homeless, by the way. As every popular event, it has defenders and detractors. It's the Celebration of Light, Vancouver's annual int...
Flower experiment
July 29, 2008
These are just the result of a walk around the block as the fleeting evening light was already dying and Abetoo made good use of its IS lens. My finger pressed the shutter locally but my thoughts were elsewhere. As always.
Raccoon story
July 27, 2008
I wasn't always Bushytail Gonzales. My real name is Joe. I do my best to forget about that, it's so lame. But once upon a time when I was a very frisky young raccoon, full of hormones and ideals, I ran into this tease of a raccooness. She was hot and classy and she drove the males around her crazy. The stripes on her tail were the sharpest I've ever seen and her bandida mask was subtle yet incredibly dramatic.One day, after having eaten too many shells and feeling a touc...
Taking Woopra out for a spin
July 26, 2008
Draw a salad bowl in your head. Throw in, at random, pieces of Google Analytics, Stacounter, ClustrMaps, Geoloc and Skype. Add dressing. Mix well. You've got Woopra. New kid on the trendy block of web statistics, Woopra is another one of those applications that seem to explode into stardom nearly overnight. The concept hasn't even emerged out of beta testing yet and already, it is the talk of the hour. The design team had planned to steer 250 beta testers into a controll...
Gotcha
July 24, 2008
Six months ago today was the happiest day of my eventful life. How time flies. The road at our feet still stretches to infinity, winding and in turn obscured by shadows or glowing in the warm afternoon sun, but it will never again be lonely. Gotcha indeed. :-)"It was a lovely day of breaking the rules, of throwing preconceived ideas into the wind, of going back to the source, of shaving the unnecessary, of looking deep inside instead of out, of holding a single hand...