Tag : France

23 Nov 2019

Capturing the mood

This island is a strange place. It hugs the base of cliffs on the Crozon peninsula in Finistère, Brittany. This particular part of the Crozon is a narrow finger of land pointing to nearby Brest. And the proximity of that port town is significant. Brest has been strategically important to France for centuries. And this explains why the Crozon peninsula, which overlooks the approaches to the port, is heavily militarised. It is littered with fortifications, most dating from the 19th […]

Behind the Image / Photography 0

15 Feb 2019

New book: Finistère Insolite

At last, my new book is here. Finistère Insolite (Exceptional Finistère) is a collection of 133 images across 100 pages exploring the wildness, vastness and serenity of, for me, Brittany’s most spectacular department. The photographs were shot over the course of the past few years, with all of the visits having been made during Autumn – a time when Brittany is relatively empty of people and even more ruggedly beautiful. Publishing this book was an educational experience. Having spent my whole […]

Projects 0

05 Sep 2018

Pic of the week: Poplar plantation

There’s something about poplar plantations that appeals to me. It has to do, I think, with their monumental appearance. I took these pictures on a bike ride we took down to towpath of the Mayenne river, which snakes down through the department of the same name in the Pays de la Loire region of France. The towpath has been converted into a voie verte (greenway) for walkers and cyclists. You can read more about the ride and the river on our […]

Pic of the week 0

28 Aug 2018

Pic of the week: Rouvre oak

I wasn’t expecting to get anything on this trip. Trish & I went out for the day just to explore. An hour down the road is an area known as the Suisse Normande, a hilly part of Normandy on the Orne/Calvados border that is cut into rocky ravines by a number of rivers. One of those rivers is the Rouvre and I’ve decided that I want to use it as the basis for a photography project (about which I’ll be […]

Pic of the week 0

11 Jul 2017

Behind the image: Brume, Landévennec, Finistère

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post because this image was shot on the same foggy morning. Having shot a number of photographs of a very bare and simply landscape, I turned my attention to the trees lining one of the several rivers that feed into this estuary. One of my reasons for this is that this is a scene not entirely devoid of mankind’s presence. If you squint very hard you’ll see some boats moored at the river’s opening. […]

Behind the Image / Exhibitions / L'Esprit Insolite / Photography 0

10 Jul 2017

Behind the image: L’aube, Landévennec, Finistère

Sometimes you look out of the window, see the weather and think, ‘there has to be a picture waiting for me’. That’s what happened here.

Behind the Image / Exhibitions / L'Esprit Insolite / Photography 0

09 Jul 2017

Behind the image: Nuit tombante, Pentrez, Finistère

We stopped here just to give the dog a run. We’d been out exploring the Finistère coast all day and, with the light fading, had decided to head back to the gîte. But our old dog Zola needed to stretch his legs. We threw the ball for him a few hundred times (so it seemed), and just as we were all feeling tired and eager to get back in the car, nature decided to put on a show. Now I […]

Behind the Image / L'Esprit Insolite / Photography 0

08 Jul 2017

Behind the image: Maïs, St-Siméon, Orne

Of all the images in the exhibition, L’Esprit Insolite, this has the simplest story. And it’s another of those ‘always carry a camera’ moments. It was a beautiful day in September. We drove to the nearby town of St-Fraimbault, mainly to walk the dog around the lake (he does so love to go for a swim), and also to take a look at the damage wrought by recent storms. Our bit of Normandy had taken something of a battering. I […]

Behind the Image / L'Esprit Insolite / Photography 0

07 Jul 2017

Behind the image: Cavaliers, Le Bec d’Andaine, Mont St Michel

Le Bec d’Andaine is strange, as beaches go. It’s at the base of the Cotentin peninsula, on the west coast of the Normandy department of the Manche. It has a fine view of Mont St Michel. And the beach is wide and spacious. Very wide. Maybe too wide. In fact, in the many times we’ve visited the Bec d’Andaine we’ve rarely had a proper glimpse of the sea. This is La Baie du Mont St Michel and it has some […]

Behind the Image / L'Esprit Insolite 0

06 Jul 2017

Behind the image: Verger, St-Siméon, Orne

They say that familiarity breeds contempt. It can also make you blind to what’s right on your doorstep. This is also a lesson about always making time to grab that photograph. It was early in the morning. I had the car loaded with filmmaking gear and was on my way to start work on the first day of shooting a short film, Cigarette. Making films, even amateur ones like ours, is a complex and exhausting endeavour, so my mind was […]

Behind the Image / L'Esprit Insolite 0

04 Jul 2017

Behind the image: Champ d’orge, Normandy

A significant proportion of my landscape work is about the traces that mankind leaves in the environment – or, as I call it, the Layered Land. Some of the signs are obvious, others less so.

Behind the Image / L'Esprit Insolite / Photography 0

03 Jul 2017

Behind the image: froid dur, St-Siméon, Orne, Normandy

We didn’t get much in the way of snow this past winter but we did get the hardest frost I’ve ever seen. I first wrote about this back in January, when it happened. The weather had been bitingly cold for a few days. Each night, when I took the dog for his final walk of the day, I’d see a strange glittering effect as the torch beam caught the frost forming on every leaf and blade of grass. I kept […]

Behind the Image / Exhibitions / L'Esprit Insolite / Photography 0

02 Jul 2017

Behind the image: Pointe de la Torche

Sometimes, when you’re looking for one thing you find another. This was quite a magical day. We were at La Pointe de la Torche, a small headland poking out into the sea at the southern end of the Plage de Tronoan in Finistère, Brittany.

Behind the Image / Exhibitions / L'Esprit Insolite 0

23 Jun 2017

Behind the image: monumental poplars

I’ve passed this bit of woodland many times, but rarely without photographing it. It stands beside the voie verte (greenway) that runs for 70-plus kilometres from the Normandy town of Domfront to Mont St Michel.

Behind the Image / Exhibitions / L'Esprit Insolite / Photography 0

21 Nov 2016

Behind the image: One place, many moods

Returning to a place that has previously impressed or moved you can be disappointing. What is held in your memory as a marvellous discovery can seem, on a second look, mundane. But that wasn’t the case with La Plage de Tronoan. We discovered this beach on a previous trip to Finistère. This November we returned, in part to revisit places we knew to be beautiful, but also as a way of saying a final farewell to our old dog Zola. […]

Behind the Image / Dust & Shadow / Layered Land / Photography / Projects 0

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