Mad about Wine: Images from 2016 Terres et vins de Champagne

(Bottles from reception)

(Lahaye red)

(4 X Champagne)

(1975 Suenen)

(3 happy ladies)

(Pascal Agrapart)

(Olivier Paulet)

(Sebastien Crozatier)

(Benoît Tarlant)

(Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy)

(Restaurant Lallement)

(Zalto Champagne)

(Cristine)

(Mélanie Tarlant)

(Olivier Paulet)

(Emmanuel Brochet)

(Françoise Bedel)

(Aurélien Suenen)

(Raphaël Bérèche)

(Tasters)

(Vincent Laval)

(Pascal Agrapart)

(Fabrice Pouillon)

(Alexandre Chartogne)

(Vincent Bedel)

(Notes)

(Zalto and lady)

(David Léclapart)

(Dominique Moreau)

(Franck Pascal)

(Françoise Bedel)

(Bottles)

(Barrel)

(Vincent Bérèche)

(Palais du Tau à Reims)

(Olivier Horiot - check out that T-shirt)

(Aurélien Laherte - "The Gladiator")

(Zalto "White Wine" glasses)

(Palais du Tau à Reims)

(Vincent Laval)

(Emmanuel Brochet)

(Alexandre Chartogne)

(Palais du Tau à Reims)

(Françoise Bedel)

(Aurélien Suenen)

(Vincent Laval)

(David Léclapart)

(Mélanie Tarlant)

(Pascal Agrapart)

((Pascal Agrapart))

(Vincent Laval)

(Alexandre Chartogne)

(Evelina)

(Raphaël Bérèche)

(Taster)

(Tasting room)

(Benoît Tarlant)

(Dominique Moreau)

(Etienne Goutorbe)

(Vincent Couche)

(Benoìt Lahaye)

(Marie-Noëlle Ledru)

(Tasting room)

(Zalto)

(Pascal Doquet)

(Emmanuel Brochet)

(Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy with daughter)

(Delphine Boulard)

(David Léclapart)

(Benoìt Lahaye)

(Christine)

(Benoìt Lahaye)

(Cyril Jeaunaux)

(Chartogne bottles)

(Benoît Tarlant)

(Olivier Horiot)

They can also be found here: http://thomasiversenphotography.com

THANK YOU!!! to Terres et vins de Champagne for giving me the honor to be the official photographer.

Secondly for the “Terres et vins special prize”. I still can’t believe I won it. I am humble and honored. Big hug from me to all of you.

Below are some technical comments on how the images came to life.

About the images.

Although there are a few pics from the pre-reception at L'Assiette Champenoise it’s more some detailed comments on the actual tasting on Monday the 18^th of April I want to focus on.

Shooting the images for the 2016 Terres et vins de Champagne, was from technical point of view, my worst nightmare – and yet – also the most fascinating photography task, I have ever carried out.

I already knew from last year, where I also shot a few images, that the beautiful room at Palais de Tau á Reims was a challenge. It’s a big room with huge windows, but only at one side of the room. There is only ambient light, which I in general appreciate – but there is not enough of it. Had I done my research right, I could have had a few good hints. You see, the influence of the sun gets stronger and stronger as the day passes. At the end of the tasting you have the best light, as the sun is at a low positing and directly facing the building. However you can manage to shoot 450 images with 30minutes to go.

The biggest problem is the huge exposure to backlight, as almost half of the producers where facing their back to the windows. Backlit images with silhouettes can be really beautiful – especially if you can tell the shape of the person and in this case - knows the shape on the producer in the frame. But it requires that there is only one person in the frame. Last year this was much easier, as the producers where standing close to the windows without any people behind them. However this year, the setting of the tasting tables was different, so the produces facing their backs to windows had their backs to those producers facing their faces to the windows. With all the people present it I found it impossible to get an interesting silhouette shot. What to do? You use a flash. But I hate flash images and I am not good with it - plus it makes my camera even bulkier to carry around. You can also overexpose (which I have done on the image of Franck Pascal), but you invite a lot of ISO noise, which I don’t like. The other half of the producers was facing the windows, but there was another problem as they were surrounded by a lot of enthusiastic wine people, who sort of stole some of the light. What was sort of left to work with was a clear light shining on the producer’s faces, but fairly quickly faded behind and underneath them. This created a fantastic opportunity. You see if you just shot the images with a normal exposure you would burn out the highlights in their faces – so they ended up looking likes white ghosts. In theory you need to change the way the camera judges the light – from “evaluating” to “spot” or “partial”. But I am not so comfortable with these setting, so I chose another direction. Instead I had to underexpose and really use the maximum capacity of my lens. By doing this – their faces were balanced. Lowering the aperture has the advantage to set dynamic focus on the object (mainly the producers) and away from the crowd. The low aperture: f/1,6 <> f/1,2 plus underexposing by 2/3 <> 1 stop lowered the shutter speed and ISO noise. The result was a completely blurred dark background with an incredible soft light. Of course shooting at so low aperture will cost you a lot of images, which is not sharp. You will have to settle with 1 out of 5 will be fairly sharp. By having so much dark dynamic raw material to work with – especially in portraits you will have to do very little postproduction. Converting most of them to black & white created even more graphic and contrast.

I also took the opportunity to shoot some of the producers outside, where there was a clear bright spring light. I used a small balcony, just outside the tasting room, which provides great shadow and contrast to work with. I tried not to disturb the producers needed break or lunch. But I reckon that at times I was like the annoying paparazzi. Forgive me.

/Thomas