Fellow Deviants,

It's been (almost) a year since I've joined DA. Time goes by quickly. Much has changed in my life, I have discovered new things, some good and let's face it, some not so good. But one thing has remained the same: The first thing I do, every morning after I wake up, is to check my DA messages and have a look at the deviations that keep flowing in. Some are beautiful, some are disappointing, but they are all unique and most of them are just breathtaking.

This journal entry is a round up of my impression of DA so far, I'll try to share the most beautiful deviations I've stumbled upon, but of course, some will be left out. Be sure to check out my favs!
Also, i would like to thank , who is the one who compelled me to join DA. Check out her work, she's incredibly gifted.
Many thanks to as well, he gave me a DailyDeviation for Kashmir's Dream, which is my most popular piece so far.

Let's begin with a few pictures of Normandy, where I currently live:




And a few more:



Voila, I hope you have enjoyed these masterpieces.
While I am at it, I'd like to address a few critics about my work: Many people see my shots as over-photoshopped, too artificial. Well I agree. The combination of Photomatix and Photoshop can be lethal. But there are a couple reasons for this: The first one is that I started taking pictures at a relatively young age (9 or 10) on a regular, non-digital camera, hence giving a certain appeal to photo manipulation: I can do stuff that I couldn't do back then. Also, some of my early digital shots were retouched with very poor PS knowledge. There are certainly things that I would do differently nowadays, but I still like my old shots: It's quite a feeling when you actually *see* progress.
Finally, the quality of my camera is very bad. I currently shoot on a Panasonic FZ18, which has a very poor dynamic range and a very noisy captor. I tend to try to correct these deficiencies on PS, which gives an artificial look to my pictures.
But of course, thank you to everyone for their constructive comments, I appreciate it, and it's also part of what makes DA so great.



To conclude, let me point you towards my website.
You can also become a fan on Facebook.

I wish you all a wonderful winter full of fabulous shots.
Again, thank you for your +3000 pageviews, +15,000 Deviantion views, 174 comments and +1000 favs.

Florian.

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