About

In short: I am Samuel, a French birder and photographer currently exiled in northern land (in Finland, to be precise). With this blog, I try to share my passions through my pictures and my texts. Photography of many subjects, mostly concerts, birds and sights from my trips, that is what you can expect when visiting this place, with texts of unconsistent quality, depending on how inspired I am.

I have birding experience from Europe but also from Chile, British Columbia, Israel or Mauritius. I started ‘serious’ photography in 2014, and wildlife photography in 2015.

Follow me: Facebook | Instagram | Flickr

Contact: sbloch.contact@gmail.com

My portfolio (aka my best pictures): samuelbloch.weebly.com

Hi! My name is Samuel, I was born in February 1993 in Grenoble, the so-called Capital of the Alps, in France. I can’t remember when I was offered my first birding book, but it was definitely a long time ago. Just like drawing, birding has been part of my life for a long time. These last years, I was however more of a geek than a birdwatcher, as I have played a lot of Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 and Assassin’s Creed. For several years, I have been watching birds mainly when I was on holiday, far from home. Was it with my parents (British Columbia, Chile, Iceland) or on trips organized by the French LPO (Ligue pour la protection des oiseaux, “Bird Protection League”)(Camargue, Spain, Turkey), I always had my binoculars within reach, but at home, I was behind my computer, living incredible adventures. In 2013, I started writing about Guild Wars 2 for the French fan site Univers Virtuels, but this activity has stopped now.

What must be said is that I found a new passion: I have become a photographer! First, the idea was to practice live photography. With the help of my friend Csaoh, who I met while playing online, I bought a camera and started to attend a few metal gigs not only as a spectator, but as a photographer. Oh, I hadn’t mentioned that I was a heavy metal fan???

Pun intended

But I was not only interested in concert photography, therefore I started taking pictures of landscapes and cities. It is only in 2015, in Finland, motivated by my dear friend (and neighbour) Mpics (the author of the head picture), that I bought a telelens and started shooting birds. I was immediatly delighted by what I could do with it, and swore to improve. I have always been interested in writing, and sharing my pictures, like Tom and Silas do, has been my fuel for opening this blog, even if I don’t restrain myself to birds.

At school, I have always been more interested in science than in litterature, even though I like learning languages. I entered Supélec, an engineering school near Paris, in 2012. I was not very fascinated by what I learnt there, except for a few subjects. Two years later, I started a Master abroad instead of my last year in France. It would be a master’s programme in Environmental Informatics: one year in Finland (metal and snow, yaay!) and one year in Copenhagen, with a graduation from the three universities in 2016. I am now a software engineeer at RELEX, in Helsinki, and couldn’t be happier 🙂

I said I liked languages, here is what life brought me so far:

   French: mother tongue
   English: fluent, daily use
   Spanish: intermediate
   Finnish: intermediate
   Danish: basic knowledge
   Portuguese: basic knowledge

My gear:

Canon 7DII
Canon 24-70mm f/2.8
Canon 10-22mm
Canon 100-400mm
Binoculars – Paralux Kalahari, probably 8×42
Birding scope in a near future, I hope

😉 Should you have any question, please do ask 😉