I am an Australian photographer based in the southwest of Western Australia, living in the bush, not far from the coast – a beautiful and popular tourist area. I am surrounded by beaches and bush, birds and kangaroos, and have a continent the size of the USA to explore. Living in Australia also gives me easy access to Asia – a five hour flight from Perth and I can be in Singapore, the gateway to Asia. I sincerely hope my travel images will inspire you.
A quick note on camera gear. All images have been shot using either film or digital cameras:
- Transparency film in the original Olympus OM1 film cameras and Zuiko lenses, then scanned with a Nikon 5000ED film scanner and processed in Photoshop.
- Shot in RAW with Nikon DSLR camera bodies, using Nikkor Pro f2.8 lenses. Then processed in Lightroom and Photoshop.
- Shot in RAW with Olympus OM-D Micro Four Thirds camera bodies, using Zuiko PRO f2.8 lenses. Then processed in Lightroom and Photoshop.
- Shot in RAW with a Panasonic GF1 Micro Four Thirds camera body, using a Panasonic f1.8 lens. Then processed in Lightroom and Photoshop.
I will give a more detailed review of my choice of camera gear in a dedicated blog post.
The Name – Rick’s Café Noir
Several years ago I had thoughts about running a cafe, preferably in Vietnam, where I could decorate the walls with prints of my travel images, and hopefully sell some – not unlike Mr Cu’s Mandarin Café in Hue, Vietnam.
It never happened.
More recently, I thought: Why not create a virtual cafe online? A blog site with an emphasis on photography and travel, where I could share tips and travel photography experiences, but obviously, not serve physical coffee. This is it.
How did I arrive at the name, Rick’s Café Noir?
I like black coffee (a long black, or Americano), hence the “Café Noir” part of the name – in French, “café noir” (pronounced Ka-fay Nwar) translates as “coffee black”.
Also, I was slightly influenced by Rick’s Café Américain in the 1942 movie Casablanca; although I am not a big fan of Humphrey Bogart, or the movie, and the Rick’s Café Américain in the movie did not exist in Casablanca during the 1940s – it was created on a Hollywood sound stage.
The main emphasis of this blog is travel-related photography, but it also includes topics such as general photography tips and techniques, technical articles, camera gear lists and reviews, book reviews, art, and coffee tips and minutiae.
The comments section of each post is open for reader responses and further discussion, but please, no politics, religion, and conspiracy theories – topics best catered for on other websites!
Although, when coffee houses first became popular in Europe in the 1600s, as an alternative to often rowdy and violent ale houses, several governments considered banning them because they were hotbeds of dissent and sedition!
Sales – Prints and Merchandise
All the images on this site can be purchased as prints and merchandise, and licensed for stock use.
Please note that the images on this website are low resolution and sometimes cropped, to allow faster page loading. I have included a link below each image to a high-res version – up to 25Mb JPG files – that would be used for printing and stock. This link opens another browser tab to my account on the pixels.com print-on-demand website that I use for print and merchandise sales:
Pixels.com started out as Fine Art America (FAA), which still exists and is a mirror site of Pixels. Everything on FAA is also on Pixels, in the same collections, with the same pricing.
With “Fine Art” in the name, FAA concentrates on print sales and framing, whereas Pixels sells the same prints and framing, but also images printed on merchandise – anything from T-shirts to tote bags, phone cases to shower curtains, beach towels to throw cushions, notebooks to jigsaw puzzles, and much more.
Sales – Stock Licensing
These images can also be licensed as stock for editorial and commercial use. Unless noted otherwise, none of these images have model releases or property releases, so the decision to use them commercially rests with the licensee.
If you are interested in licensing an image for commercial use, please send an email to [email protected] with details of intended use – geographical location, usage type, industry type, image size and location, publication quantity, duration of licence – to get a stock licence fee quote.
