La Belle France Gallery
I am lucky enough to visit France quite regularly, and this Series contains some of the many images I have gathered whilst there.
I am lucky enough to visit France quite regularly, and this Series contains some of the many images I have gathered whilst there.
At the extreme eastern end of the Pyrenees, Canigou stands 2786m tall and forms a wonderful sunset location from the Languedoc area.
Making this image took some patience. Taken in Provence (the place to see lavender in France) I spent literally the whole day driving around the same region trying to capture the harvest in full swing. Having noticed machines standing idle earlier in the day, I returned to this spot as a last ditch attempt at the end of the day, and got lucky.
This image is a small portion of the the astonishing fields of the Etang de Montady, a wetland drained by monks in the 13th century and when viewed from above is reminiscent of a bicycle wheel. The centre of the wheel is off the to the right of the image, and the boundaries between the fields form the spokes to the wheel.
The dark skies in the Languedoc, southern France, are wonderfully dark and especially good for star trails. The question then becomes what to shoot the star trails with?! Since this region of France is renowned for its wine, a vineyard seemed a good choice, and when we are in this area i am always drawn to this old building on the edge of rows on vines. A cold clear night is really good for this kind of photography but i did loose the last few frames from the sequence that makes of this shot when the lens fogged over in the increasingly cold temperature.
I don’t think the subject matter needs any introduction at all, so I won’t. You can get great sunset shots from the roof terrace on the top of the Montparnasse Tower. Look carefully beneath the Eiffel Tower, you can see the big screen showing live football from the Euro 2016 football tournament hosted by France in June/July 2016. The hosts ended up as beaten finalists to Portugal later in the month.
A fabulous momentary splash of sunrise lighting up the Aiguille du Midi (3,842 m / 12,605 ft), a mountain in the Mont Blanc massif within the French Alps. It is a popular tourist destination and can be directly accessed by cable car from Chamonix in the valley below (where this image was taken from).
A grab shot taken on my iPhone, taken through the window of the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, "high-speed train") travelling south between Paris and Bordeaux. The person in silhouette joined the train in Paris with us, a typically proud and well turned out Parisian lady who thanked us profusely for helping her on and off with her vastly oversized luggage.