Freelance Photography : Bertrand Celce

Animals, Métro shots, and a smile

<Pigs for the high gastronomyThese still pigs guard the entrance of Apicius, one of the top tables of Paris in a quiet street not far from the Champs Elysées. Traffic jam on a table

Night Life

Waiter at Le Palace, Paris A few night life pics for a change, all shot during the last 12 months... The Lido

Bercy Art

Ghost in a warehouse in BercyHere are a few pictures shot in the former wine district of Paris, better known under the name of Entrepôts de Bercy. Mostly abandonned in the 1980s', several dozens of hectares of cobbled streets, warehouses, Négoce offices and vat houses were used by several artists for impromptu Art happenings and mural paintings.Painting on a partly-destroyed wall - Bercy

Paris Pictures

The Sacré-Coeur (right) Time to post a few pictures. Here are a few pictures I shot in Paris either this year or last year. Dim lights are my preferred lighting, that's when nuances come out as well as unexpected visions of otherwise familiar sitesCruise on the Seine - Deck view on Notre DameThe evening was pleasantly warm, a gentle breeze was helping make it feel better. A seine cruise is particularly scenic at the points where the river is the narrowest, like here between Saint-Michel and Notre Dame. You could almost throw coins to the amateur musicians playing on the banks.

Tsukiji, Tokyo

Green and Rose Composition at the Tsukiji MarketThe vibrant Tsukiji market in Tokyo is always a hyperventilating experience for a photographer. I am also grateful to the city- and market authorities to let the ordinary public come and stroll there. they could have easily closed it to strangers for security reasons (all this knives and speeding self-propelled carts).Knives and Blood in TsukijiThe only thing is that you better awake early, as the peak activity at Tsukiji is in the wee hours of the morning. Arm yourself with determination and don't bring your best shoes, you might come back with bloody stains. The market is buzzing with hundreds of buyers, sellers, workers who slice and package tons of raw fish.

Urban Japan

A Building in KyotoPart three of the new photo albums will be about achitecture scenes of urban Japan. Day and night, the cities of Japan are a golden mine for a photographer, because of the richness of the architecture of course but also because of the lighting and because of the many small things that build an atmosphere and a picture.Phone, Power Lines in KyotoHere, the phone/power lines are anarchic, and it makes me think to similar messy wirings that I saw in the US and that I used for nice pictures.

Japan Portraits

Cosplay Couple under the Snow - Ikebukuro, TokyoIntroducing another serie of Portraits shot across Japan in 2008 (mostly Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka). This Album will be named A Street Fashion Serie...Two Girls with Phones - Tokyo StationThe pictures will try to give you a glimpse of the street life and vitality of the big Japanese cities. A photographer's paradise, no doubt of it. Colors, changing fashions, lights and reflections...

Japan Scenes

Backwards CarHere are a few pictures from the soon-to-come Tokyo and Japan album, random pictures made in the streets, the underground commercial centers and wherever something interesting showed up in front of my camera. I thought winter in Japan might be too dark but I was wrong : dim lights offer sometimes more ambiance-laden images than a bright summer day.Man in BlueSomewhere in Tokyo. An underground passageway, maybe in a subway station. Is he a worker making a pause or a security guard doing his job, whoever he is, there was the combination of colors and lines and it struck my eye.

Russia (2)

Katia (Moscow) Moscow is a town whith many opportunities for a photographer. Girls have a natural elegance and class and I had the courage to ask for a pose a couple of times. This picture was shot on the stairs to "Vielka Lozhka", a striving Russian fast-food outlet serving traditional russian cuisine where you can eat something healthy and affordable. The name means Fork & Spoon.This was a hot summer evening and several of us went out to enjoy the cool air and the quietness of the night. Summer is usually nice and warm here, the Russians tend to make the most profit of these long days and don't wait the weekend to go out and party. Russian towns are mostly safe in the evening, it seems to me.
Summer was by the way very cold and rainy in the northern half of Western Europe, including half of France. Comes another cold summer like this one and it could effectively cool down the West European global-warming crowd. After the acid rains and global warming craze, why not try the ice-age panic ?

Pоссия (1)

Russia...Is there a country in Europe with more mystery and appeal to the romantic side of our mind ? I spent some time in Russia this year for a photo exhibition of my work in the town of Nizhny novgorod, 500km east of Moscow. The trip was also an opportunity to feel the pulse of modern Russia and to fully immerge in the unchanged russian-ness of its people and villages. This picture of blond children on a soviet-era sidecar motorcycle, with a woman and her dog at the cloth line in the background is synonym for me of authentic, deep Russia...Nizhny Novgorod has it all. Astounding views on the Volga and the Oka, a Kremlin, beautiful, fully-renovated churches, still many pre-revolutionary old wood house, in spite of new buldings sprouting all over the town and its suburbs. This former merchant town (before the revolution) is at the crossroads between the Russian West and the Russian East.