Sun drenched...in France

For all of you who long for a bit of sunnier climes right now, maybe my new photobook about the South of France can cheer you up a little.
The pictures in this book were taken on a trip to the South of France in September 2009. The only camera I had with me was a Panasonic Lumix LX3, a camera that I really started to like after working with it for the last couple of month. The camera is very light compared with the DSLR that I usually use and the image quality is very good.
The great advantage of those small pocket-sized cameras is that you can carry them around with you all the time and use them as a kind of diary or sketchbook.
A particularly wonderful feature of the LX3 is the ability to set everything, including the focus, manually. I shot all images in aperture priority mode, for convenience.
After taking some hundred shots I changed the focus setting to manual focus and
took photos that are intentional blurred or seem to be out of focus. I like the blurred images actually more than the ones I had taken before, mainly because they remind me of some French Impressionist paintings and leave more space for imagination and phantasy . I am still experimenting with the manual focus and use different aperture settings to get some interesting shots with this great little camera.
A book with other images from the same trip will follow soon.

Click on the book to enlarge and to look at the photographs in your own time.