Sunlight on the chateau, France
Warm, late afternoon sunlight illuminating the baroque splendour of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
A miserable day when I arrived, this shot illustrates the virtue of waiting, watching the clouds and knowing that sometimes the sun will just peek out below them before setting over the horizon. Two minutes later, all was overcast gloom once more.
Although the light makes this image ‘pop’, the building itself is magnificent enough in the flesh to warrant a visit whatever the weather. So magnificent, so lavish and imposing in fact that King Louis XIV’s nose was well and truly put out of joint by his finance minister Nicolas Fouquet’s flash new pad. He had him arrested on trumped up charges, thrown in jail for life and grabbed it for himself. Now that’s how to show who’s the daddy. He then proceeded to further this game of aristocratic one-upmanship by instructing the original design team of Fouqet’s chateau to create something bigger, better, blingier. They built him Versailles.
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1/125, f5.6, ISO200 28mm
7929 × 2964 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Carousel and Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, Paris
Long exposure of illuminated fairground ride at the base of the butte Montmartre overlooked by the iconic white Byzantine domes of the Sacré-Coeur basilica against a deep blue dusk sky. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
Each year between Christmas and New Year the Paris Mairie that dishes out the licences for the rides that dot central Paris decrees that they should be free for the use of citizens and visitors alike. So whilst the kids rode this beautifully painted Belle Epoque double decker carousel (not that you can tell that from this long exposure, I’ll grant you) again and again, I blew on my fingers so I could take a few shots. Brrr, it’s cold in Paris in winter.
Since we were staying in Montmartre, I decided that I’d like to see the café where Audrey Tautou works as a waitress in Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain so we walked there. Unfortunately, my chosen route took us directly past the more exotic offerings of Pigalle and the children’s eyes nearly popped out of their heads. I declined to answer any and all questions generated by these tantalising sights, no doubt leaving them scarred for life. C’est la vie…
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6 seconds, f16, ISO200 28mm
5104 x 2012 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
p.s. If Amélie is the only Jeunet movie you’ve seen, you should try Delicatessen, also starring the amazing rubber chops of Dominique Pinon; what an actor – what a face!
Mont Blanc La Traversée route
The snow capped domes of Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest mountain, towering over the glaciers and pinnacles above Chamonix, France. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
This is one of my favourite images from this trip; not because it’s the best, but because of the incredible amount of detail you can resolve with the latest digital cameras and good lenses. This picture show pretty much the whole of the Traversée or La Voie des 3 Monts route from the precariously balanced Cosmique refuge (how they built this huge three storey building so high and in such a remote location I cannot imagine), over the avalanche strewn snow fields above the Vallée Blanche, the ridges and folds of the massif to the summit high above.
On the high resolution version you can watch the climbers as they create zig-zag trails all the way up the mountain, dwarfed by the huge scale of the white landscape around them. The enlargement inset shows a couple of intrepid mountaineers as they thread their way between huge slabs of ice, returning from a dawn summit bid I would imagine.
It’s easy to underestimate the difficulty of climbing in such an environment on a beautiful, clear day such as this, but just a few days later several mountaineers were killed in an avalanche on these very slopes. You can read about it here. Even if you’re skilled, experienced and well equipped these high mountains can be treacherous. 20,000 climbers reach the summit of Mont Blanc by the various routes each year.
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1/320 second, f11, ISO200 85mm
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