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What is this site?
This is my personal web site, dedicated to my travels indeed, but not to me.
I put in heaps of time and energy into it since Christmas 1999, in order
to make my travel pictures and stories available to all.
There are now more than 14,000 pictures of places I've travelled
to, covering 4 continents and 49 countries.
I'm quite selective with my pictures and focused on quality. You
will not see pictures of crowds, family and friends, and hardly any of
me, but you will see an extensive coverage of places I've travelled
to.
I'm originally French, so I write a lot in French but the site is in English
by default, as are all the picture comments.
Pictures, pictures, photos... click on the eye (top right)
This site is indeed essentially dedicated to pictures. By clicking on the country
maps, you will reach a selection.
Each picture has a comment, and often a more extensive description
once you click on it to enlarge it (you will sometimes even
see a magnifying glass indicating that a close-up of the picture is available).
The pictures are all categorized by region (South East Asia for example),
subregion (Thailand) and location (Phuket), but have also often been indexed
with keywords or themes, especially for certain parts of the world
(see highlights below). In this case, a page from
the region (Australia for example) will point to the theme: animals, places,
nature, etc...
As this site gains in depth, I will continue to enhance themes to give
a transversal approach to viewing pictures.
See in Navigation how to have the best access
to pictures, including the Top 20s.
Highlights
The major parts of this site are:
1) Indonesia: this is what got me started
- I lived there for 18 months, combining more than 35 trips, 60 flights,
4000 pictures (1200 selected for this site), wrapped up by 3 months of traveling. I love the country
and constantly work on making all the content I have available and accessible.
Definitely worth digging into!
2) Southern Africa, Australia
and New Zealand: big travels there and extensive
photography have justified a dedicated page and many additional maps or
ways to explore the riches of these lands.
3) Wildlife: because I love wild animals, you will find many pictures
of animals in the biggest parts of the site, as well as a well developed
section on diving which is a passion
in itself and features a dense content.
Travel stories (click on the book, top right)
I take many notes during my travels, so I send and write extensively about places
I visit and the mood I experience. Even if there are many in French, I
am regularly translating and the breakdown makes for a very interesting
visit. Not half as viewed as the pictures, but definitely a gold mine
for travel fans, although they are not a travel guide.
See the Travel Story page or in Navigation
to have the best access to my travel stories.
Navigation
In the top right corner, there are always three icons:
- the eye brings up a menu from which you can reach pictures
by region, subregion or location. The number of pictures available is
indicated.
- the book brings up a menu from which you can reach texts,
also ordered geographically.
- the compass brings you to a map of the site where all
the regions, subregions and locations are laid out, with an indication
of the number of pictures to see.
From the home page, you can also reach:
- What's new: pulls up by date the latest events
on the site - something I can update from anywhere.
- Best of: a quick view into what I've most
liked per continent, and a link to the most viewed pictures (Top 20s).
- Friends: a section reserved for my friends,
who have personalised pages and the possibility to discuss with me and
see other pictures.
At any time, you can use the top left corner to go back to the
home page (my logo) or to the previous page (arrow).
This site is fairly interactive, so do play around with your mouse.
Finally, as the site is not hard-coded, you will find that much of the
content is accessed from a database and keeps on being updated. I check
what is most popular and improve it. So come back regularly to
check out the latest!
More
To find out more, please visit the history page which
details my different trips and versions of this site.
To add this site to your favourites, please click on the following
link
IY
(it will create a link to www.extrajoce.com in your Favorites menu
if you have Internet Explorer)
No (or little) frills policy? I try to spend most of my time on the pictures,
comments, maps, keywords and texts, and only rarely fool around with design.
I have given my site a few facelifts, but I've kept it quite basic to
achieve greater speed, as the look-up in the database is already slowing
things down.
Who am I?
I should have started with this maybe, but, once again, this site is more
in celebration of the world's beauty (places, the mark of man in time,
people and nature) than of my own person. I've always lived in France
until I finished my studies, except for 3 years in the US which changed
my life when I was 8 years old, giving me English and the travel bug.
Since I'm 20, I've tried to spend as much time travelling as I could while
still working in various places (Indonesia, France, the UK and now Singapore).
As you would surely tell from surfing this site, I love South-East Asia,
where I have my roots through my father, nature (and diving) and culture
in general. And I believe there's no place where something beautiful or
interesting doesn't strike me, which is why I most often have my camera
readily at hand... to share it with you!
Oh, and the site name? Well if you haven't seen the picture that explains
it all, let me just tell you many other people have...
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