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Visiting the Dordogne and Limousin, June 2012 – Photo Report
As part of the same trip that started with a few days in beautiful Paris, we travelled south to the Dordogne / Limousin area for a few more days of exploration, relaxation, and degustation before joining up with some friends in the region for a three-day wedding extravaganza.
Our route took us from Limoges down to the Dordogne river itself, which is festooned with medieval villages and chateaux hewn out of hillsides and perched atop cliffs. Many of the villages and chateaux were variously at odds with each other during the Hundred Years War, with the French hunkered down in one redoubt while just a kilometer away, on the other side of the river, Richard the Lionheart might have been planning his next conquest. We were able to variously visit or canoe past many of these during our first couple of days.
Click on any of the photos below to view larger versions on Flickr – and click them again once you’re there if you want to see full screen!
Castelnaud-la-Chappelle
Beynac-et-Cazenac
Panorama of the Dordogne from Chateau Beynac-et-Cazenac
Roses of Beynac-et-Cazenac
Interior staircase of Chateau Beynac-et-Cazenac
Over the course of our visit we moved North, away from the Dordogne river, and visited many quaint (and quiet) villages en route, including Bourdeilles and the very picturesque Brantôme, “the Venice of the Dordogne”.
Roses of Bourdeilles
Brantôme Panorama
Canalside door, Brantôme
Hungry Ducks of Brantôme
No Parking, Brantôme
More images can be found in my Flickr set “The Dordogne and Limousin – June 2012“.
A Quick Hop to Paris – Photo Report
Let’s just get something straight right from the start: it is possible to drop your camera on its shutter release and take a good photo in Paris.
That being said, I have been to Paris so many times, that to be frank my last couple of visits have seen me running out of inspiration a bit. I thought to myself, there are only so many photos of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower that you can take. Which is true, but it’s been a few years since I did the “proper” tourist Paris, and a chance to take my girlfriend to the City of Light for her inaugural visit on our way down to the Dordogne meant that I had the perfect opportunity to recapture some of the most hackneyed photo subjects in the world – but we were lucky enough to have nice light most of the time, so I didn’t feel too ashamed of myself.
So take a ride with me as I present my own version of the Standard Book of Parisian Photography.
Carvings in the facade of Notre Dame
Keepie-uppie in Montmartre
Montmartre Couple
Paris Panorama from the Tour de Montparnasse
Eiffel Tower from Below
Sevres Gate on the Boulevard St Germain
Ile de la Cité Panorama
Summer Days on the Ile de la Cité
Deep Discussion on the Ile de la Cité
Sunset over the Pont des Arts
"Love Padlocks" on the Pont des Arts
Sunset at the Louvre
Sunset at the Louvre
Louvre Pyramid at Night
Eiffel Tower from the Palais de Chaillot, by night
You can see more of these shots on my flickr set here.
There will be more to come from the South of France in a couple of days, a set of shots I very much look forward to reliving.
Winter in Berlin – Photo Report
Howdy everyone, hope February’s treating you well. Just this past weekend I travelled to Berlin for my girlfriends’s birthday celebrations and lugged my camera along. I love Berlin, it seems to be right at the centre of Europe’s respective cultural and political maelstroms and it’s a vibrant, ever-shifting and fascinating place to spend a few days. Of course, by choosing to travel there in early February we more or less guaranteed that it would be viciously cold, and we were not let down on this front. One (late) morning we discovered that the reason we’d felt especially cold at 4AM was that the temperature had dipped to -18C (0F). I’m from South Carolina and not even 12 winters living in London meant I had experienced that kind of cold. But, as they say, there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad preparation. Fortunately both of us were well kitted out with thermals, glove liners, toe warmers etc and still had a whale of a time. Anyway, the photos below show a rather abstract outdoor view of Berlin and don’t reflect the sheer amount of time we spent warming up indoors. But then again, once you’ve seen one blurry picture of a bar you’ve seen them all…
Reichstag Dome Reflection
Berlin Abstract
Berlin Holocaust Memorial in Winter
Berliner Dom and Fernseturm
Museum Island, Winter Light
Sony Centre Roof, Potsdamer Platz
Berlin Wall at Topography of Terror site
Gate of Babylon, Pergamon Museum
Jewish Museum Staircase
Anti-ACTA (Piracy Bill) March, Mitte
Moon and Fernsehturm, from Mitte
Roa Mural, Kreuzberg
Astronaut Mural by Victor Ash, Kreuzberg
As usual, more photos from this trip can be found over on Flickr.
Photos from Barcelona and Alt Emporda
As a once-resident of Barcelona I return from time to time to reacquaint myself with the city and with my good friends who still live there. We were able to have a small visit last month and enjoyed sauntering around the Barrio Gotico and Barceloneta, including a visit to my favourite cava bar, Can Pejano.
After a few days we moved on to the countryside, to a tiny village called Montiro in the Catalan area of Alt Emporda, where a friend’s family had a welcoming holiday home. Montiro is surrounded by lovely apple orchards and fields of straw grass, rolled up into bales.
Photos from Bruges, Ghent and Brussels
Last weekend we took a short city-break to get away from London for a bit and managed to find somewhere even colder to go in late November: Belgium. We spent a positively brassic 3 days and 4 nights in Bruges, Ghent and Brussels. I must say that due to the weather I never really felt like I got into my photographic groove – when it wasn't (below) freezing and overcast with dull winter half-light, it was heaving down with snow or gale-force winds. But I managed to get a few shots anyway, and a couple of them turned out to be decent.
Mortal Coil 