31 October 2015

Halloween

Let's enjoy Halloween, with its vivid orange and black colors!

I'm absolutely not used to celebrating Halloween, and I had completely forgotten that kids might come that evening to gather candies - so I sort of escaped of my apartment and spent the evening outside, afraid that they might throw eggs at my door... Finally I'm not even sure anyone came knocking and asking for sweets. How sad. 
Next year first resolution: get better prepared for all year events in advance :-) 

 PS: and because I love DIY: have a pumpkin!

Halloween Halloween pumpkin

Orange leaves and black stem Orange leaves and black stem

Orange and black leaf Orange and black

26 October 2015

Cooking experiment

Do you like roasted chestnuts? 
When autumn comes, this is a meal - or a snack - that I'm really eager to eat. However, I had always bought them at small stalls, in the streets, and had never endeavored to harvest and/or cook any - before last weekend.

Exploring one of the nearby forest (the one in Meudon) with my photography sensei, we came across tons and tons of chestnuts lying on the ground, which had visibly fallen just a couple of nights ago. It was truly amazing. So we began gathering some of them, then a bit more, and suddenly we had collected a whole bag of chestnuts and we could only focus of one thing: eat them at last :-)

Those terribly appealing chestnuts finally made their way to my home (fortunately they were less delicate than mushrooms, as I recall from some unfortunate past attempts), and from there, to my kitchen where we contemplated them for a while, drooling over the perspective of eating them. But how? We were not that thrilled at the idea of cooking them directly in the oven, for fear they might be too hard, so the only remaining solution was to boil them first - and roast them in the oven later on. 

Grabbing a pan and some water, we immediately implemented the idea; and hardly after half an hour of additional time in the oven, we had a bunch of home-cooked roasted chestnuts before our eyes! 

See how good-looking and appetizing they seem, don't they make your mouth water? 

Roasted chestnuts Roasted chestnuts

Roasted chestnuts Yummy chestnuts

23 October 2015

Photo mash-up #2

Today theme will be: PINK!
Again, I have been inspired by recent Flickr weekly Catchy colors contest: next time I'll try and set a slightly more innovative subject...

Let's gather some pink pictures now:

Colorful table Bug on a stem
Flower battlefield Painted wall
Happy pink day :-)

21 October 2015

Another forest

With colder temperatures settling in for some weeks already, I have felt slightly lazier and have not gone out as often as I would usually have during Summer. Yet the opportunity to see a friend gave me enough courage last Sunday to go and visit the forest of Meudon, which I had not visited yet.

Unfortunately the weather was terrible - at least for photography (grayish sky and all...). Luckily though there was no rain, so I was able to enjoy strolling around in this beautiful forest. As I had my camera with me, I tried to take a few pictures despite the lack of appealing lights, and, well, it was not quite as bad as I thought it would be: mushrooms, moss, chestnuts and dead leaves were there again to cheer me up, and they did help encourage my camera to wake up from its beginning of hibernation.

So, still a few forest pictures with already much-explored themes... But autumn season is so amazing, there would never be too many pictures celebrating it :-)

Opening chestnut
Opening chestnut husk

White mushrooms
White mushrooms

Tree and twig

13 October 2015

Photo mash-up #1

Well, I think I will follow Flickr blog Catchy Color themes as first ideas of Photo Mash-ups. Accordingly... let's begin with YELLOW! (color theme from two weeks ago already)

Let me know what you think of it :-)

An island of lightBannister pattern Banana pieColored logs
Happy yellow day :-)

1 October 2015

Let's innovate

You see, I usually organize articles in my blog in quite a static way: 3 or 4 photos gathered at the bottom of posts with a common topic. However, this definitely doesn't help photos be the main point of focus, since they can't get your first glance, don't you agree?

Therefore I think it's time to create a new era of articles where more accent is placed on photos (true purpose of my blog^^) with better mixing and/or homogeneity than can be done by just sorting pictures by date. I don't really have many ideas yet, but why not begin with colors, or subjects, or emotions, or the weather - something of the sort? Let's call it the 'photo mash-up' innovation! :-)

Coming soon...

PS: a picture of the remains of my poor basil - devoured from bud to leaf by a ferocious pasta eater :-)

Basil pot
My basil pot