Posts by regis

This is the third part of my Indonesia trip (read part 1 and part 2). The program was to climb Semeru (an even harder hike than Merapi). Unfortunately a combination of a tired knee (really painful) and failing hiking shoes made me skip the hike. Instead I spent two days resting while Stephane and Christophe climbed Semeru. The view from Semeru was fantastic but the climb was grueling. Both Stephane and Christophe skipped dinner that evening and slept for 12 hours straight. Durring those two days, I explored the town, taking pictures of the local market and local taxi. The goal of the trip, the main reason I went anyway, was to photograph the volcano called Kawah-Ijen. It’s not a lava flowing volcano, but still a very spectacular one. On the way to...

This is the second part of my travel to Indonesia (read part 1). We left Yogyajarta for the North face of the Merapi. It was time to get serious about hiking. The second volcano on the menu was the Merapi (2,930 meters), our base camp was at 1000m. The plan was to get to the summit one hour before sunrise (5am local time). It’s a very popular hike among locals, who take two days to climb it. Unfortunately, we choose to do it in one long day. We left our camp at 10:30pm and we hiked the entire path in the dark. We had a local guide, who was over 60 years old, chainsmoked at each break and was wearing rubber boots all the way to the top. I, however, had light high-tech hiking boots, was reasonably fit but carrying a 25 pounds (12 kg) camera bag and tripod....

Four months ago, I went to Indonesia to photograph some of the most spectacular volcanoes on the planet. Indonesia has over 150 volcanoes and 127 of those were active (in 2012). My plan was to visit only five on the island of Java; they were Ana Krakatau, Merapi, Bromo, Semeru and Kawah-Ijen. In this first part, I will focus on the first couple days and the visit of Anak Krakatau and the temple of Borobudur. Indonesia is composed of 17,500 islands, the biggest islands are Sumatra, Celebes and Java. The island the most known  is probably Bali. In this trip we spent 14 days on Java and only 3 on Bali. Indonesian volcanoes erupt regularly (as Mount Kelud did a couple of days ago). I had no experience climbing active volcanoes so I went with a travel agency that...

A couple weeks ago, I was invited to take part of a collective photo shoot in an equestrian farm in Sonoma Valley. It was the first photo shoot of a group called: The collective model. The idea behind the collective is to have a group of talented models, make-up artists and photographers who get together to help each other out. Nobody gets paid (except maybe the location) and everyone benefits from the shoot. Everyone gets new images for their portfolio. For this first shoot, the location was a farm in Sonoma Valley, where we had access to horses, stables and rings. There were 5 models (Taylor, Brian, Debbie, Yuliya and Russo) and one other photographer plus myself. After a quick introduction and walk around the property, we got to work. It was a very fluid...

Hearst Castle was the home of William Randolph Hearst and is now a California State park. Hearst Castle is located near the unincorporated community of San Simeon, California in the Central Coast of California. Despite being relatively far from majors cities (San Francisco or Los Angeles are both 250 miles away), it attracts about one million visitors a year. So don’t expect to be alone when visiting the “Ranch”. We spent a couple days in Paso Robles, so one day we drove to Hearst Castle. On the way, we saw wild zebras. Zebras were imported by Mr. Hearst for his private zoo and released in the wild (at least on this large property) in 1958. For me, the most striking feature of the place was the two swimming pools: The Neptune pool (outside)...