A new lens for portraits: Canon 135mm f2 L USM
For making nice stunning portrait, you need to get a nice lens with fast aperture. The faster you go, the more you blur the background, that’s pretty obvious. Getting portrait with f2.8 is already getting serious, however this is probably not the best you can use to get this stunning portrait you see in magazine cover. Taht’s why I took the Canon 135mm f2 L USM lens, which is a pretty old lens in the Canon line-up, however it’s a fantastic one for many reasons. First, it has the 135mm focal, which is fantastic for making this dynamic portrait where the subject is really a perfect focal for getting your subject really in great relation with the background. The f2 aperture at this focal makes the background even more blurred, with a nice sweet creamy bokeh. And it’s a L lens, so the best Canon can do which is probably meaning one of the best lens in general!

Nic Plugins (recently purchased by Google)
Discussing with people who use it, Nic Plugins collection seems to be a no-brainer if you want to be serious on finalising your photos with this nice “magazine first cover rending”. That’s why I tested it, and I was convinced in few minutes! It takes a bit of time to test the several options, and it makes the process flow a bit longer, but the result is simply stunning and really professional. All the pictures have been treated in Lightroom 4.3, then were treated with several of the Nic Plugins: Sharpner Pro 3.0 (not too much though as the Canon 135mm f2 L is already incredibly sharp!), Viveza 2.0 for the lightning and Color Efex Pro 4.0 for getting the glamourous colors on the photo (however not much neither, as the snow conditions are particular). To be frank, the results out of the 5D MKII and Canon 135mm f2 L were already fantastic, but with the Nic Plugins collection, it gets this little something on top for getting this pro result. I migth put some tutorials or receipts if you’re interested.
St-Cergue in the Snow
This photo shoot session was done few months back, but I had no time to post it before. It was a nice day after a good snowy one, and the temperature was well below 0°C. We went to St-Cergue (Vaud), a ski resort in Jura mountains in Switzerland. There is a nice walk in the mountains with prepared way for walking in the snow. A nice moment in the winter to get a bit of sun and make some nice photos!
All photos were shot with Canon EOS 5D MKII and Canon 135mm f2 L USM, treated with Adobe Lightroom 4.3 and finalised with Nic plugins Sharpner Pro 3.0, Viveza 2.0 and Color Efex Pro 4.0.















