So, we too wanted to go ice skating, but I too had to buy new skates first. We finally went this Saturday.

Apart from the fun of ice skating, the cold weather also provides some beautiful natural winter scenes, and the opportunity to try to make a few nice photos.

I had quite a backlog of photos, some even 10 years old. We had all these photos, on a big pile, in what is now the baby room. So when we started clearing out this room a few months ago, we decided that we needed to get rid of this pile. So we spent lots of evenings and complete days sorting out the photos and putting them in the albums. We even took a bunch of them on our last holiday!

Well, yesterday evening we finally stuck the last of our pictures (of that same holiday) into our latest album, so we’re finished… for now, of course…

A rough estimate:

• 12 photo books and albums
• 820 pages
• 2300 photos
• 9000 adhesive photo corners

This is the result:

Well, anyway, because I haven’t been using my weblog very much in the past year, I decided that I would start a photoblog. So, the first picture is coming up right now, and hopefully, I can give you regular updates with new (or old) pictures.

All pictures made by me, of course, and with my Canon Powershot A620 digital camera, unless otherwise stated.

The last time we did that, we uploaded the photos via the website. Unfortunately, the user interface wasn’t very good. Certain selections you made were forgotten and you had to make them again. We only had about 10 photos that time, so it was not such a big problem. And the print quality turned out to be very good!

But this time, we wanted to upload 144 photos, so I didn’t feel like doing things two or three times. Therefore, I decided to try out the offline order software. Well, I’m not very enthusiastic about that either, but at least it remembers the selections you make.
When it finally came to uploading the pictures, I was quite surprised that it went so quick. I am pretty sure that my 256 kbps uplink cannot upload a 3 MB picture in about 10 seconds.

I noticed that the HEMA order software had made an “Upload” directory in its Album directory. All my original HiRes photos had been copied there, and they were disappearing one by one. But every time, the topmost picture was first replaced by a much smaller, low resolution version, before it was uploaded! I quickly copied one of those files as “evidence”. Apparently, the photos are resized to 1600 x 1200 before they are uploaded. OK, I didn’t say they could do that, but if the pictures really have to be resized before they can be printed, so be it. But the pictures were also compressed! And not just a little!

My original photo was 2724 kb, with a resolution of 3072 x 2304.
The uploaded picture was only 369 kb, with a resolution of 1600 x 1200.
Of course, I tried resizing the picture to the same resolution myself, (without compression!), and got a photo of 1658 kb. That’s 4.5 times larger!

I thought I would wait to see the result. So today we picked up the pictures, but they’re terrible. You can clearly see the JPEG compression artefacts on some of the pictures. So, I’m certainly going back tomorrow!

Update (Sep. 7): I went back to the HEMA with my pictures, and with a CD with the original HiRes photos. The woman behind the counter said they normally don’t take back digital photos because they don’t know the original quality. So I told her that I did, and that they didn’t use it! Well, she would send them back, but said she couldn’t guarantee anything.

Update (Sep. 16): Today, I went back to the HEMA and got all new prints of our photos. These photos are all ok, no visible compression artefacts or anything like that. So they can do it at the HEMA. If you just make sure that they get your HiRes pictures, for example on cd. But don’t use their offline order software!

In the last week of our holiday we moved even further south and east, to the other side of the Cevennes. We stayed there with Irene’s French “parents”, in a very large house, in a very small and very old village. We did one easy walk here, but it was just too hot! The rest of the week we just enjoyed the beautiful surroundings, the nice old villages and the great weather.
And, unfortunately, all good things come to an end, so yesterday was our last day. We left around 9 in the morning and arrived home at about 10.30 in the evening! Tomorrow, it’s back to work!

Viaduc de Millau

Gorges du Tarn

Le Vase de Sèvres, in the Gorges du Tarn

P.S. These are some of the pictures we took with our new camera. After three weeks of intensive use, we can say we are very pleased with it. The camera is easy to use, yet versatile. And the photos are of very high quality.

We had a great time. We have walked le sentier Martel (14 kilometers, 6 hours), rented waterbikes, swum in the lake, visited Cannes. The last morning, we went canyoning! That is really very much fun to do (if you’re not afraid of heights!). It’s part walking and abseiling, and part swimming, wading through the river and jumping off waterfalls. Very spectacular!

On Provence Web there is some more info about the gorges, about the village of Moustiers and about the lake.
And take a look at this site, which has some nice pictures of the gorges and the lake.

Update (July 16): The photos are now available from photos.bvrolijk.net, if you have the correct username and password, that is.

Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t been very good all the time, we had a couple of snow storms, but luckily also a few very beautiful days.

On Tuesday we celebrated my birthday with a very nice dinner in a restaurant in Les Deux Alpes.

Update: The photos are available on my photo gallery.

We have done a lot of walking, up to 7 hours and 900 meters of climbing. We have swum in a small mountain lake at 2100 meters altitude. We have done something called Hydrospeed on the river Vénéon, and we threw snowballs on the glacier on Pic Blanc at 3330 meters altitude!

The weather was very good, 35 to 40 degrees mostly, except for the two times that we nearly washed down the mountain. Rain and thunder up in the mountains is not much fun when you still have to descend for an hour and a half to get back to the car… But we got home safe alright.

All in all, we had a wonderful holiday together. Only way too short…

Update: A selection of photographs is now available on my site (if you have the password, of course).

So, I decided I’d also arrange something there and then, and today, I got the confirmation from the hotel… I’m going to Selva Gardena, Italy in a few weeks! And I’m very much looking forward to it!

Update: If you have the correct username and password, you can check out the photos here.