author - presentation
Born in 1976 close to the Jura's mountains, in the east of France, Nature took a great place in my life during the adolescence. Following the observation of a butterfly in the flowers of the garden, I was caught of passion for the microcosm of insects. Many years afterwards, I followed with my binoculars the aerobatics of the birds with the same amazement. During a long time I traversed Nature as an observer, learning much from this world inside our world.
20 years old, I began in photography with an aim of sharing my discoveries among many people. Learning the technique by reading books, I've progressed little by little through excursions devoted to the butterflies. During a few years, I also practised the black and white laboratory : I thus liked to control my photos, from the development of negative film to final pulling. With the passage to the slide, I turned over without regrets towards the world of the color - and I still work with this support today...
Already at the time of my first expo, in 1998, I matured the hope of becoming a photographer of nature and to live about it. I had the immense desire to show Nature under one day new, more poetic and original by the choices of natural lights, the attitudes of the seized animals. My spaces of photography were not exceptional by their diversity of species, but I knew them perfectly to have traversed them so many times.
What is a good photograph? Today I still haven't found the answer to this question. The self beauty of a photograph depends on the experiment of each one, of its capacity to be moved deeply, to understand the hidden message. Many photos in our world only have a documentary function. Contrary to that, I think that it's necessary to interpret reality to take photos. I spend many time on a topic to find an original idea to photograph it, trying various framings, testing several objectives to vary the prospects... You also have to capture the good light and to interpret it... At a given time, a catch occurs in me and makes me start. If the emotion was well controlled, it must be transmitted to the spectator who will see the slide or pulling.
There is a constraint with this process of creation : it's necessary to take time. I live five or six hours every day on average in Nature to take photos or to observe animals. Birds like Peregrine require energy and patience without being ensured of the results ; I can observe many weeks one species to know all about it and to take the best photos... I often have a quite precise idea on what I want to show and I persevere until obtaining the perfect result.
Since 2004 and my collaboration with the "BIOS" agency, my photos are published in various magazines of nature and other written supports. I work on projects like butterflies or birds of cliffs ; some photos are still in my spirit - will they become a reality one day ? This continual dissatisfaction makes me live for seeking new lights, new ideas, for reinventing Nature, for showing it under one new day. How many photos were thus erased forever, condemned by their transitory character... To be a photographer is to play the measurement of time as an equilibrist. Several seconds captured for eternity... the heart of photography!
self-portrait in the Jura mountains - november 2005
topics of work
You can take many various Nature photographs... I try to work on few topics, as I can look further into each one.
- Since my beginnings, butterflies of open spaces - calcareous lawns - are a priority topic in spring and summer. These color lives posed in the green of grasses are always a great source of inspiration for my art.
- The plants offer also various occasions to marry the forms and the colors. In winter I work on the details of dead leaves fallen into snow, the grasses taken in the ice... The peat bogs, which I visit in autumn and in spring, are also fantastic environments by their original fauna and flora.
- Birds also knew to poke my creativity ; two principal topics emerge some today. First of all the tits which I photograph in Chinese shades on the setting sun in January and February - and birds of cliffs. This last topic takes me many time to observe where a bird often poses on a branch, then in hours of mounting.
- Mammals like fox or squirrel decorate sometimes the photographic exits. The badger interests me mainly in summer : the short nights make it leave the burrow at dusk when the light is still present.
- Lastly, for one year I have developed an original topic based on butterflies or flowers photographed on the disc of the sleeping sun or the moon. Contrasts of luminosity are such as only a disc emerges on a black bottom, the topic appearing in Chinese shade.
free screensavers
You can download my free screensavers featuring my best images. Two resolutions are available : 1024 / 768 pixels (on LEFT) and 1280 / 1024 pixels (on RIGHT). You just have to click on the labels below, to let the image post itself completely and finally to copy the image on your computer to use it as a screensaver.
Common Blue
Common Kestrel
Mazarine Blue
Marbled White
Jonquil in the woods
Tit in a tree
Common Kingfisher
Tits at twilight
Peregrine
Dandelion and sun
Butterfly at dawn
Young fox
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© Florent CARDINAUX 2007 - All rights reserved - Duplication forbidden.
