Loupiote - Photography by Tristan Savatier

Contact Loupiote.com - Tristan Savatier

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:16:00 +0000

Email: tristan@bok.net

Phone: +1 415 864 6466 (US West Coast Time-zone)

Facebook Fan Page -

Or contact me by posting a comment below (if you use Anonymous profile, make sure to include your email, so that I can respond you)

What do you use to make the watermarks on your photos?

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:27:00 +0000

Several people have asked me that question: What do you use to make the watermarks on your photos?

To create the semi-transparent watermarks on my photos, I use Photoshop. I created custom "actions" and "droplets" (i.e. scripts that automate a series of commands) to add various layers with the watermark, using appropriate blending modes to give the semi-transparent effect. But creating those scripts this is quite complicated and require a very good knowledge of Photoshop layers, blending modes and scripting, so I do not recommend this approach unless you are very good with Photoshop.

The good news is that there are web services that can add watermarks on your photos for free, like http://www.watermark.ws or http://picmarkr.com . Those probably work pretty well in most cases, so you should try them. I am sure there are other services like those, just google "watermark online" or "online watermarking".

Semana Santa in Sevilla - Order Posters Online

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:31:00 +0000

You can now order prints and posters of my amazing photos of the Semana Santa in Sevilla (both in Color and B&W). Those are the traditional Holly Week celebrations in Southern Spain.

To order prints and posters, go to: http://loupiote.smugmug.com/Religion

To browse, read more information or view the slideshows, click here

Online Prints of Burning Man Photos: Is that commercial exploitation of the Artists's work?

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:50:00 +0000

I received an e-mail from a well known artist who showcased many large art installations at Burning Man, and who was concerned that selling individual prints online of photos of his art taken at Burning Man was infringing on the copyright he own over his art and any photos of it.

Shared Copyright: I am fully aware that all photos taken at the Burning Man Festival have a copyright that is shared between the Burning Man Organization, the photographer, and possibly the artists who's arts are represented on the photo. I do mention the artist name in all my photos descriptions (when it is known), and not only that, but i give a direct, clickable link to their website (when i know it), which most other photographers don't do. The copyright watermarks on my photos are generated automatically, and it's not very practical to create different watermarks for the photos of each different arts, but i am fully aware that my copyright is not the only one that governs the use of my Burning Man photos.

Why this ugly watermark? The reason for the ugly copyright watermarks on my photos on Smugmug (the service I use for printing) is that my hi-resolutions images can be accessed on Smugmug, so they need to be protected. I use Smugmug only for the printing process, not for showcasing my photos. My photos are best viewed using the "Slideshow feature" from Flickr.

On Smugmug there is currently no text description for any of my photos - I am working on that - but people arrive to Smugmug from my other sites only when they want to order a print, and the Smugmug galleries with Burning Man photos are password-protected.

Why I let people order prints of my photos online: In the past many people have asked me for prints of Burning Man photos, and I would always send them the hi-res file, and tell them to burn a CD-ROM or DVD (or copy the file on a memory card) and bring it to a store to make the prints themselves. I do not have the time anymore to do that, and when I do that, it actually costs more to those people in time and efforts to obtain the prints, compared to ordering them on-line. This is why I now let people buy prints on-line from Smugmug. I make no profit from that, since the cost of the Smugmug hosting service is on my bill ($150/year), and the small markup (on the prints) will probably never offset that cost.

Of course I still send the hi-res files to the artists (and models) who ask for them, and to the Burning Man Organization, but if they want to get prints, it is generally cheaper and faster for them to order them on-line rather than to print them from the hi-res files.

It is very difficult for me to get paid for the time and effort that I spend with making Burning Man photos (and photography is also a form of art). I spend about one month working on them every year, and make virtually no money with them. Actually last year, the revenues I got from Burning Man photos licensed to magazines was about $200). That does not pay the bills, it does not pay for my time, and it is not an incentive to continue making this kind of photos (even with all the rave revues i get from Burning Man lovers).

My point in allowing people to order prints of my Burning Man photos on-line is not to make a profit or to exploit someone else's art, but to provide something that many people ask me, and do it in a more efficient, cheaper (for me and the people who want photos) and faster way that before.

To support the artists, we encourage you to contact them directly and ask them if they sell other photos of their arts.

If your art is represented on one of my photos and you do not want people to be able to buy prints of these photos, let me know and I will take the photos off Smugmug (where people order the on-line prints), and I will place a notice that prints are not available for these photos, upon request of the artist who's art is on the photo.

I wish I could have personally informed the 500 artists who's art are on my Burning Man photos that I intended to make prints of them more easiely available on-line, but it would be a dawnting task. I don't have a list of the phone numbers or contacts for those 500 or so artists, and gathering it would take another couple of weeks, a time that I don't have.

Feel free to post comments or contact me about this post.

Order Prints or Posters Online

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:24:00 +0000

Burning Man Photos: As per the rules of the Burning Man Organization, I cannot provide online prints of my BM photos until I obtain their written permission to do so (as this is considered "Commercial Use" of my photos). I am in the process of applying for their permission.

I will post a notification on my facebook fan page when online prints and posters of my BM photos will be available, so please join my my facebook fan page!

You can also email me the name or URL of the photo(s) and I will inform you when prints and posters become available.

You can now order high-quality inexpensive prints or posters of many of my photos on-line from loupiote.smugmug.com (with no watermark, of course!).

Smugmug is a leading provider of professional-quality prints, and they redo prints for free if you are not satisfied by the quality. Prints are cheap, too!

Some of my Smugmug galleries are password-protected because they may contain some nudity.

The password is loupiote

If the photos you want to print are not available on Smugmug, please email me at tristan@bok.net.

To order a print or poster:

Locate the Gallery at loupiote.smugmug.com
(password: loupiote)
Locate the photo(s) in the gallery
Click "Buy" above the photo or in the gallery
Select the paper size and type, number of prints then Checkout (secured payment by Credit Card)

Of course, prints are made from the original high-resolution images and won't have any watermark!

Price depends of print size and type, but here are some indications:

4x6 prints are less than $2
8x10 (almost page size) about $6
16x20 (poster size) are about $33
Many other sizes available
Shipping in the US is about $3

If you are concerned about people being able to order online prints of photos of your art, please read:

Online Prints of Burning Man Photos: Is that commercial exploitation of the Artists's work?

Urgrade your Browser!

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:17:00 +0000

If you are still using Internet Explorer 6, you should upgrade your browser!

A lot of the cool new dynamic features of the so-called "web 2.0" are not well supported by IE6 because of its limited and buggy javascript and CSS support.

You can download the latest versions of the most popular internet browsers below:

Google Chrome

Firefox

Internet Explorer (if IE8 does not work for you, try IE7)

Opera

Safari

Widget shows in real-time what pages of your website others people are watching

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:27:00 +0000

I have added a cool free real-time statistics widget from whos.amung.us in the menu-bar on all my pages, including this one:

If you click on this widget (here or in the menu bar), you will see how many people are currently browsing this site, in what part of the world they are located, and what photos they are looking at (in real time!).

For the most interesting display, click this widget, then click on the "Recent" on the "readers" page to see the countries of the visitors and the page they are looking at (and you can check out those pages!).

A very funny Nigerian spam / 419 scam email

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:51:00 +0000

Dear Beneficiary,

It's our intention to reach you in this medium. We the International Finance Corporation (IFC) is a member of the World Bank Group and we have organized a program called "Social Security Benefits".

This program is to help fight against poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results and help people and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity in the public and private sectors of the world.

Our vision is that people should have the opportunity to escape poverty and improve their lives in all over the world.

More than two million people are currently benefiting from this program, and you are lucky to be selected as one of the beneficiaries across the world. There are many other people who may qualify for this grant, but have no such opportunity. Beneficiaries email addresses were selected randomly by our electronic automated machine from over 140 websites including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Aol, etc.

It is our pleaseure to inform you that you are being granted the sum of $850,000.00 USD Check as an Award from us and for being selected as one of our beneficiaries.

As Africa is the world's largest poorest continent, the Financial Commitee of this program have deposited your Social Security Benefit Check Award of $850,000.00 USD to the United Parcel Service of Nigeria (UPS), for them to facilitate the delivery of your check to you prior to your early contact with them.

Your Settlement Check Parcel was deposited and registered with Reference Number IFC-WB3-07/UPS.

You are to contact the United Parcel Service of Nigeria (UPS), with your Reference Number, Full Name, Resident Address, and your Mobile Telephone Number, to enable them further the delivery/shipment of your check to you.

Note that the shipment/handling fee for the delivery/shipment of your check will be paid by beneficiaries. You are hereby advise to contact the United Parcel Service of Nigeria to book your check delivery/shipment arrangements.

==============================

United Parcel Service Nigeria LTD

Plot 781 Emeka Anyaoku Street

Area Eleven Garki

FCT-Abuja

Nigeria.

Tel: +234-703-972-4016

Email: ups.express@vista.aero

==============================

Our Regards.

LARS H. THUNELL

Executive Vice President

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CORPORATION

My Website is now available in Chinese!

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:54:00 +0000

Thanks to google - and quite a bit of creative hacking on my part, too, to allow the chinese pages to be indexed by all the search engines.

http://zh-cn.loupiote.com/

Cleaning Sensor Dust

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:52:00 +0000

This is a sensor test photo that i took at Burning Man 2008, with the diaphragm (aperture) closed to the maximum (i.e. maximum F-value, F32) shooting the blue sky. I have never seen as much dust on my sensor. Good thing I know how to clean a CCD sensor :)

I recommend a Giottos Rocket air blower to remove the bulk of the dust, then you can use the wet sensor swabs (with 100% pure methanol optical solution, also called methylic alcohol) to remove sticky particles that don't go with the air blower, if necessary.

Don't put more than a couple of drops of methanol on the swab, otherwise it would be too wet and leave deposit marks on the sensor. You will have to clean several times before getting a clean sensor, especially the first time. To clean, you must sweep the swab on the sensor from side to side. For best results, the width of the swab should the exact width of your sensor, so that you only need one sweep. Swabs made by Visible Dust. are excellent quality, I use those. After sweeping, put back the lens and do a test shot, then zoom on the image and check if there is still dust. usually the dust is located near the corners or near the edges. if you see dust, repeat the process.

To do a test shot, you must set the camera in A mode and close the apperture to the maximum F value (e.g. F32), and take a photo of something uniform, e.g. the sky or just a piece of paper. Set the camera to manual focus and make it completely out of focus, so if you see a dot on the test shot, it will be dust.

Sensor cleaning was painful at the beginning, it took me one hour to get all the dust OFF the first time. But now i can do it in two of three iterations, and it takes 10 min or so, and I am no the least nervous about doing it on my expensive camera.

Also, remember that if you have dust on your sensor, it will probably not show on your photos if you shoot with maximum apperture (i.e. minimum F value, e.g. F2.8 or F3.5). So if you have dust on the sensor and must continue to shoot with the dust, remember to shoot in A-mode (apperture priority) and use maximum apperture, i.e. use the minimum F value of your lens.

Dry-cleaning the sensor with rotating brushes charged with static electricity will work only with the dry, non-sticky particles on the sensor. But it will not cleanup sticky or greasy particles. Those can only be removed with a wet swab. So even if you get one of those dry cleaning brushes (e.g. Arctic Butterfly), sometimes you will still need to use the wet swabs.

NEVER ever use a spray can to blow away the dust inside the camera. The very cold gas out of the air-can would cause irreparable damage (micro-cracks) to your sensor.

There are other CCD cleaning options available, but that's what I use and it works well for me. Or you can pay a professional to do it, but it usually takes several days and it's not cheap, and this is not always possible if you travel. So you'd better learn how to do it yourself.

Fish

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 12:06:00 +0000

Fresh Fish (by the pound)

Spotted in a Fish Market in Hanoi (Vietnam)

If you like this video, check out my Website at http://www.loupiote.com and don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Message to google-bot

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 06:42:00 +0000

dear google-bot,
please crawl this page: http://www.loupiote.com/flickr.shtml

thanks and merry Christmas.

Obama gets elected in San Francisco - Castro Street - photo

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:39:00 +0000

Obama gets elected in San Francisco - Spontaneous street party in the Castro

Order Mad Cow T-shirt, Sweatshirt or other stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:38:00 +0000

World-wide shipping (international). Secured on-line payment by Credit Card. Full refund with 30-day guarantee if not satisfied.

There are many different versions of this cool cow, each available on a variety of T-shirts, Sweatshirt and other objects. Click on a link to see them and order:

Order stuff with kissthecow.com (generic, the cheapest, sold at production cost!)
Order stuff with Mad Cow
Order stuff with Kiss the Cow!
Order stuff with Vache Folle (French)
Order stuff with Vaca Loca (Spanish)
Order stuff with Bese la Vaca! (Spanish)
Order stuff with Vaca Louca (Portugese)
Order stuff with Beije a Vaca! (Portugese)
Order stuff with Mucca Pazza (Italian)

Stock photo licensing

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:52:00 +0000

High quality, high resolution files of all my photos (with no watermark) are available. Photos licenses can be purchased for commercial or editorial use in newspapers, magazines, advertising, brochures, books etc.

Please contact me for licensing options and royalty fees. Please indicate the photo URL and describe the exact intended use.

Free use: You can share, post or blog most (*) of my photos on personal, non-commercial web pages or blogs with no advertising, provided that you give proper credit to the photographer (Photo by Tristan Savatier - www.loupiote.com) and a working link to www.loupiote.com (see blogging conditions here). (*) See exceptions below.

(*) Exceptions to free use: My photos that are represented by agencies cannot be used unless properly licensed from those agencies.

Note that Flickr does not allow posting photos that you did not take yourself, so don't repost my photos (or any other photo found on the internet) on Flickr, or you risk your Flickr account to be deleted.

Burning Man Decompression Party 2008 photos

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:57:00 +0000

My Burning Man Decompression Party 2008 photos (San Francisco).

Conditions for free use of Tristan Savatier's photos

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:14:00 +0000

You are allowed to display most (*) of Tristan Savatier's photos for free under the following conditions:

(*) Exceptions to free use: My photos that are represented by agencies cannot be used unless properly licensed from those agencies. Agencies can sue people mis-using the photos that they represent, so you might want to ask me before using my photos if you are not sure.

1) Only on a personal blog or webpage that DOES NOT show advertising

If your blog or webpage displays advertising, you must ask for permission.

2) Send the web link (URL) of your blog or webpage.

If you don't, no big deal, i generally find out by other means, but i like to know where my photos are being used.

3) Please provide Copyright attribution / Credit:

If possible, put the following line immediately under the photo:
Photo © Tristan Savatier - http://loupiote.com/ - Used by Permission
And please do not crop-out the copyright watermark in the photos.

4) IMPORTANT: Always back-Link the photo to the original photo-page (see below):

You must link the photo itself to the original photo-page, i.e. where the description of the photo can be seen. If you cannot locate the photo-page, link the photo to http://loupiote.com. The link should NOT contain rel="nofollow".

The simplest way is to use the <Photo Embed Code> provided in each photo page. Click on to get the HTML code for putting the photo in your blog.

5) Recommended way to blog my photos:

The simplest way is to use the <Photo Embed Code> provided in each photo page. Click on <Photo Embed Code> to get the HTML code for putting the photo in your blog.

You can also use the ShareThis or AddThis link above the photo on my http://www.loupiote.com/ website photo-page. If you come from Flickr, to find the photo-page on loupiote.com just click on the link immediately under my photo on Flickr.

Conditions for use on commercial blogs or websites:

If your Blog or website is commercial or displays advertising (e.g. google adsense), use of my photos is NOT PERMITTED unless you have obtained my written permission.

See stock photo licensing details here.

When someone uses my photos without permission, I file Copyright Infringement notices with their service providers or Web hosting company, and that causes the infringing user accounts to be immediately terminated. So make sure to ask permission before using my photos on commercial websites or on blogs that have advertising.

LovEvolution - San Francisco LoveFest - LoveEvolution

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:35:00 +0000

My San Francisco LoveFest / LovEvolution photos.

Burning Man Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:15:00 +0000

My Burning Man 2008 (and many previous years) photos are on www.playa-dust.com.

Bicycle stolen in San Francisco

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 04:56:00 +0000

someone stole my bicycle (probably Sunday Sept 21).

it's a green "Trek 930" brand with a white fork, it's covered with white and red reflexive tape (hard to remove) and it's also covered with that playa dust from the burning-man desert.

there was a triangle el-wire in the front-wheel, a luggage rack, and a mirror on the handle-bar, on the left. new tires.

hi-res photo here: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2050/2482420970_a618db2e57_b.jpg

if you see it, call me right away (or email me if you don't have my phone) - thanks!

Royal Norwegian Guard

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:02:00 +0000

This is video. Best viewed in Fullscreen. Also available
on flickr and on youtube.

Meat Markets

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:27:00 +0000

I created a new Meat Markets set. Enjoy!

Photos of Laos

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 08:18:00 +0000

I am uploading my photos of Laos in this set. Many more to come.

My dog-meat photos censored by Ipernity

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:14:00 +0000

My contentious and gruesome dog-meat photos might be soon censored by Ipernity.

I moved them on www.dog-meat.net, a website that I fully control.

Olympic Torch Relay (San Francisco)

noreply@blogger.com (Tristan) — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:19:00 +0000

Photos taken at the Olympic Torch Relay / Run in San Francisco.