Street performer in Annecy, France

My Friend Pius from Daily Travel Photos has been raving about this town in the north of France for a while.

Passing through from Switzerland into France seemed like a good time to visit him, and see if its as good as he's been saying! Despite a less-than-favourable weather forecast, we headed out for a day of photography, food and as it turned out, festivities.

Daily Travel Photo Notes:

Canon 5D mk 2 + 17-40mm f4L + Hoya Circular polarizing filter: f8, 1/250sec, 19mm iso200

This shot is taken close to the middle of the day which often results in harch light (dark shadows + washed-out highlights) - here however there are plenty of clouds around that work to diffuse some of the light so that the shadows aren't quite so harsh. I've used a circular polarising filter to bring out the saturation - particularly the blue in the sky. To retain extra colour, the exposure is set to slightly less than the metered value with brightness brought up in raw development.

A thing to watch when using a polarising filter is the drop in light coming in to the camera - I've adjusted the ISO up to 200 to keep the shutter speed high enough that the objects in the sky don't become too blurred.