Peter & Georgina Bowater

Carnival in Venice

2012-03-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work.

Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts"

Shakespeare. As You Like It

It seemed a good idea to go to Venice again after our fruitful trip last year. So why not go for the Carnival? There are several reasons why we would think seriously about doing it again but that is not an expression of regret. There are lots of people and, for photographers, it is a competetive environment. We're not competetive photographers and don't shoot sport or news, so it's a long time since we worked on a project like this. The weather isn't at its best in February but we were lucky again and apart from very cold days the light was generally good and interesting.

The costumes are spectacular. The imagination, skill, work and sheer artistry that go into these outfits shame a lot of professional theatrical productions. The best of the characters added dramatic skills to their costumes turning the area around St. Mark's Square into a huge stage where anything could happen - and it did.

Many of the costumes were superb, many just good or amusing or interesting. And of course a welcome smattering of the ridiculous. Despite the crowds, the atmosphere was good natured, almost without exception. It's rare to see so many people enjoying themselves in spite of frequent biting winds from the Adriatic.
For us, this was something of an experiment and the pictures on this blog posting were taken with just two lenses which we were using almost for the first time: a Canon 300mm f2.8, which we bought very recently, and a Canon 135mm f2 kindly loaned to us by Klaus Bothe at Isarfoto. Neither lens had the convenience and ease of use of the zooms that almost everyone else was using but we have been delighted and, in cases, astonished by the technical quality and resolution and we probably benefited from the discipline of having to compose and frame and think more than usual. The presence of so many other photographers with everything from phones to Hasselblads sharpened our reactions. At least, given the cheerful atmosphere, there was hardly a need to sharpen our elbows.

As usual, we shot too much and shot with several other lenses. We're still working on the majority and will post them later. Some of the photos above should also lend themselves to different interpretations - we just have to find the time.

The Heart in the Forest

2012-02-09T06:50:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work.

Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

A slow day on the Dubai Stock Exchange

2012-02-09T06:19:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work.

Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

“When I was young, I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is.”—Oscar Wilde

“Whoever said money can't buy happiness doesn't know where to shop.” Bo Derek

Rivers and Streams

2012-01-22T02:50:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work.

Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

We failed to find or imagine a fitting title for this little article but we did come across this magnificent, if less than entirely relevant, masterpiece:

The petty streams that pay a daily debt
To their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls' haste
Add to his flow, but alter not his taste.'

"The Rape of Lucretia" William Shakespeare

We've been looking at a little local project to photograph the upper reaches of the River Drôme. The Drôme is not a mighty river but it is endlessly attractive and despite its unimpressive size it has hugely influenced the landscape and the lives of the people who live in its valley. It has also given its name to the Departement where we live in France.

By coincidence, we had climbed to the top of the Pic de Luc a few weeks ago and found a splendid view of one of the most striking features of the upper Drôme. In 1442 a huge chunk of the Pic de Luc fell into the valley. Enormous house-sized boulders, now known as Les Claps, peeled off the mountain and blocked the flow of the river forming natural dam which created, behind it, a lake five kilometres long. In 1804 inevitably progress got its way, the dam was breached and the lake drained. Now the Saut de la Drôme makes an impressive short waterfall and rapids, formidably difficult to photograph. A helicopter would be ideal but perhaps we'll just wait for better times.

The lake bed, rich alluvial soil, with the deceptively discreet Drôme zig-zagging across the fields on the right, hidden by a line of trees.

Close-up of the lake bed and river.

Above Les Claps farming has largely taken over from the original marshlands. But as the valley narrows, the Marais de Bouligon is now a modest nature reserve. The local tendency to build dams has been revived by a family of beavers who have made the entry to the nature reserve a little more complicated by blocking the exit stream from the marsh and raising the water level.

A stand of deciduous trees on the edge of the river, opposite the Marais de Bouligon.

The ice-bound Marais de Bouligon.

The source of the Drôme was a bit of a disappointment. A municipal plaque, passed by a stream which rises quite a lot further up the slopes behind the hamlet of La Batie-des-Fonds, announces the river's source but we're inclined to walk up to the top one day and have a look for ourselves.

Memories of Good Times Past

2012-01-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work.

Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

We've done quite a lot of travelling, sometimes we forget just how much. Travel must be in our blood. It's a condition hard to control. We haven't been travelling as much lately and the frustration is palpable. We have a feeling that the sedentary life doesn't suit us and pushes up our blood pressure and makes us cantankerous. It's time to get going again.

One of the great assets of being photographers is that we have a lot of very vivid memories which we can recall every time we delve into our archives. Travelling probably does broaden the mind and it is the best antidote to boredom. We can be very nostalgic and, while never bored ourselves, probably bore other people for hours with our tales and experiences. We've both been guilty of the sin of vainglorious boasting when we compare and relate our experiences. Photography has not made us at all rich in terms of cash and property but our lives have been a wealth of experience.

We've been looking back over some of our earlier work as we're aware that we've been neglecting some good material and we need to freshen it up and recycle it.

Eilean Donan Castle. Scotland.

We lived in Scotland on and off for a dozen years or so and decided that the west coast of Scotland was the most glorious and atmospheric of landscapes.


Indian tribal women working as labourers on a power plant construction project at Rihand, India.

We visited India many times, always separately, but often shot the same projects as they progressed. In India we were always struck by the people's composure and self-respect and the elegance of the women, even in the worst
circumstances.


Garlic seller in the Cours Saleya Market. Nice. France

We lived in the Var an hour's drive away from Nice for quite a few years before moving to the Drome. Despite widely held beliefs to the contrary, we have always found the French people friendly and laid-back and very easy to photograph.

Well-testing during a desalination project in the Indus Valley. Sind. Pakistan.

Even 20 or so years ago working on a project in Sind and visiting Karachi, Pakistan was not an easy place. The photographs were taken during Ramadan and the temperature near the Rann of Kutch was over 50C and drinks and food were not available until after 6 pm.


Pluckers in tea garden on the foothills of Mount Kinabalu, background. Sabah. Borneo.

A trip to Malaysia and Borneo took in Sabah and Sarawak where the subject was plantations and a project to grow rattan in the depleted forests of Sarawak. The local people were amongst the most delightful one could hope to meet, quiet, reserved and intelligent. I couldn't help feeling that their leaders had made a big mistake when they joined the more frenetic Malay Federation.


Aboriginal rock painting in the Kakadu National Park, NT, Australia.

The job in Darwin was photographing a big gas turbine power station cut out of the mangrove swamps. The opportunity to go to Kakadu was irresistible and it was a happy excursion as it is an absolutely marvellous place and one of those that we plan to go back to.


North Sea oil production platform and safety boat.

We both spent many days, weeks, months working in the North Sea during the construction and exploration boom in the late 70s and throughout the 80s. It was exciting and stimulating and physically demanding but it was fun and we loved it.

Stooked oats drying on the coast of Ardnamurchan, Scotland.

One of our early shots when we lived in Kirkcudbright in S.W. Scotland and before we went to Papua New Guinea in 1970. Our passion for the west coast of Scotland never went away - it's a pity that we had to.

Monks travelling in a tuktuk. Bangkok. Thailand.


Storm approaching over sugar cane plantation in the Ramu Valley, Papua New Guinea.

It was good to be able to go back to Papua New Guinea a couple of times to shoot assignments and to have another look at the country that we had lived in for three years in the early 70s and where our daughter was born.

Huge clouds lit by the setting sun dwarf a relatively massive North Sea oil platform.


Racegoers at Royal Ascot Week.

We lived in Ascot through most of the 80s and found it a very pleasant place to be.


A family restaurant in Xi'an, China.

We went to China usually separately many, many times in the 80s and 90s. There was a lot of construction and development to shoot especially power plants, steel plants, textile and electronics factories. A host of other subjects too. We found China endlessly fascinating but very hard work. We were always pleased to be there but always relieved when the time came to go back to Hong Kong.


Thai monks photographing each other in a Bangkok temple.

This shot was taken during our first visit to Bangkok way back in 1972. We were using up our leave from our contract in Papua New Guinea and carrying our daughter, then 9 months old, in a backpack. We had three months travelling through S.E Asia on a shoestring. In those days Bali, Java, Malaysia and Thailand were an almost unspoilt paradise for outsiders like us.


Oil exploration rig in dense Amazon jungle. Ecuador.

Georgina provoked considerable jealousy with this assignment to Ecuador. The image above was grabbed with difficulty between rainstorms, betting that the helicopter would turn up quickly enough to beat the next downpour.

'The Rags of Time' *

2012-01-02T07:10:00.000-08:00

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Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

* 'Nor houres, dayes, moneths which are the rags of time'

John Donne: The Sunne Rising

Geology is not our subject and we know little about it. However, we've always adored mountainous regions without asking too many questions about their provenance. Living in a truly mountainous limestone region of France where we can no longer casually use the word 'erosion' in the past tense has woken us up to another fascinating preoccupation.

Here in the Drôme we are surrounded by geology. Part of the view from our house is a jagged, almost vertical, rock face and with binoculars we can watch it erode. The most spectacular example of local geology is Mont Aiguille which is, apparently, about to launch some 20% of its bulk into the valley.

What a sight that cataclysm would be and what a pity. Unstable rocks, spectacular strata and weird shapes are easy to find in our region.


Rapidly decaying limestone pillars seen from Tussac looking into the Cirque d'Archiane.

Everywhere there are unaccessable - at least to us - pockets of forest and grazing which offer sanctuary to wild life. After snow it's obvious that wild life abounds. Occasionally we see chamois, bouquetin, martens, deer etc. and, more often, vultures, now quite common.

The Cirque d'Archiane is famous for its rocks and cliffs and well-known to climbers.

Archiane village and Rocher d'Archiane.

A few days ago we went out with a new 300mm lens for its first trial and took the opportunity to get closer in to some of the local cliffs and strange formations.

Close-up of the face of the Rocher d'Archiane where older rock gives place to new deposits - one mountain on top of another. With a big enough enlargement, it's possible to see a group of chamois underneath the tree, mid-left, above the main strata.

At the head of the valley, Les Aiguilles d'Archiane. The trees give an idea of the scale and the fissures in the rock give an impression of fragility.

A couple of hours' walk from Archiane the sunny village of Benavise is dominated by the Rocher de Combau. Walk through the village and climb for five minutes through the fields and these strange formations rise above the forest.

The First Snow

2011-12-23T03:25:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work.

Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. ~Pietro Aretino

On Tuesday we had our first snow. It snowed all day and transformed the landscape from the sombre browns and greyish greens of mid-winter to a tapestry of startling, graphic beauty. It's more comfortable to be here in Châtillon in summer but to us, as photographers and worshippers of landscape, freshly fallen snow is the apotheosis.

We live on the Chemin des Vignes and have vineyards as our neighbours. These vineyards have been the most satisfactory neighbours we have found to date. There is something primordial about vines. They flourish in harsh conditions and give of their best in stony soils, sometimes in almost no soil at all. They relish baking summers and appreciate cold winters from which they bound back into life early in Spring and the whole cycle starts again for them to be cut down almost to the ground after having given their best. Like many of the best wines, vines can mature with age and, given the chance, can grow very old indeed.

We walked into the vineyards and spent a couple of hours enjoying the views and the changing light and here are some of our attempts to record that fleeting day of snow which disappeared as fast as it came.


A view down the Chemin des Vignes towards Glandasse, now obscured by cloud. This view was taken from almost exactly the same spot as the Summer view which opens our previous blog.

The sun appeared for a few minutes and completely transformed the landscape.

On the way home we passed one of the many local walnut orchards.

At home, most evenings, we enjoy the produce of the vineyards that give us so much pleasure throughout the year. Wine production is so much more than just agricultulture. Man has not had to go back to his roots as, in this department of life, we never left them.

We wish everyone a merry Christmas and a glass of something special and, of course, the best possible year in 2012.

Cabanons and Vineyards of Châtillon-en-Diois

2011-12-13T03:49:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work.

Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

A well-preserved medieval village on the western fringes of the French Alps, Châtillon-en-Diois has more than its fair share of the good things in life. The village is tightly contained towards the head of the valley of The Bez where it opens out into a fertile basin intensively and sympathetically farmed. The valley slopes on both sides of The Bez provide first-class vine growing conditions - deep, stony soil, south-facing and well-drained with lots of summer sunshine of Mediterranean intensity and cold bright winters.

Apart from the quality of the vineyards, which has brought Châtillon-en-Diois three AOCs, 'Clairette-de-Die', 'Châtillon-en-Diois' and 'Cremant-de-Die', the situation is gorgeous with the cliffs of Glandasse rising to 2 000m in the background and, incidentally, providing wonderful walking country and lots of summer grazing.

One of the most striking aspects of the vineyards is the Cabanons - small and mostly stone-built, they come in a variety of sizes and pretensions. The vineyards originally belonged to the various families from the village. The people grew enough grapes for their own wine-making needs and perhaps a little extra for sale in local fairs and markets. For some it was a fair walk to their plot and, during the spring, summer and autumn evenings, the family could camp out amongst their vines with a rudimentary shelter which became the centre of a very pleasant mix of work and relaxation.

Between the end of the 19th Century and the middle of the 20th the individual plots were gradually incorporated into the fortunes of four families who turned Châtillon's wines into more than just the vin de pays. Phylloxera was the turning point for the local wine industry. The added work and maintenance needed to re-establish the vineyards were too onerous for the village's families; the vineyards became more commercial and the Cabanons developed into their present form as stores for tools and equipment, a ground floor stable and overnight accommodation above.

That was perhaps not such a bad period for the villagers as they almost all enjoyed seasonal employment in the vineyards and the social life that went with it. A social life which is nicely illustrated on reproductions of old photographs appearing on plaques scattered around the vineyards. Great, evocative photographs evoking more than a twinge of nostalgia and a longing for quieter times. Easy sentiments that tend to be diluted after a look at the village's War Memorial.

Most of the local people have little involvement with the vineyards and wine production any more. With the AOCs and a serious demand for the excellent local sparkling wines, the vineyards are entirely commercial and apparently prosperous, still the main business of the village. Fortunately, the vineyards remain very much part of the village and continue to be a part of the social fabric. Perhaps it's something French but there is nothing forbidding about the vineyards - no fences, no exclusion, nothing to suggest that they do not still belong to the people. It's unusual to walk through the vines without meeting neighbours or summer visitors. And in the summer, the cabanons revert to their previous cheerful rôle. Picnics, communal and otherwise, and well-lubricated balmy evenings punctuate the season from June to October.

The cabanons come in a variety of forms from the smartest and most aristocratic, above at La Beyliere, to more rustic but practical shelters.

The vineyards are always a pleasure to visit. The seasons are strongly marked and always striking, none more so than in autumn after the vendange.

Portraits

2011-11-30T06:07:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work.

Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

Recently, most of our work has been on landscape subjects or similar and on our Papua New Guinea images. For a long time we have been neglecting one of our first and most successful subjects - portraits. Not formal portraits but people going about their everyday life or people we just happened to meet. Apart from any other merit they may have, these pictures remind us of very pleasant and interesting times. We are working our way slowly through our archive and most of the images that we have chosen to date have been from our various travels in Asia. Of course the Papua New Guinea images also include a lot of portraits - but that's another story. There are more of these portraits on our website in the 'People' gallery.

Young Balinese girl performing at a village ceremony. Ubud. Bali. 1972

Dancing master and pupil. Den Pasar. Bali. 1972

We were lucky to have been in Bali nearly 40 years ago. It was not the frenetic place that it is now. There was only one major hotel and we didn't stay in that but found a village chalet in Ubud. The most lasting impression of Bali was the gentleness of the people and the high place that artistic expression took in their society. Everyone danced, sang, played instruments and/or painted. There was batik of a very high standard, wood carving and metal work, etc., etc. not created for tourists but created for the people themselves whose life seemed to be one long theatrical production.

We've both worked in China fairly frequently but always separately which may be why, despite finding China endlessly fascinating, we have never been able to love the place. Most of our trips there were between 1985 and 2000. We were struck by the variety of characters and racial types, especially in more remote places where the ubiquitous Han are the overwhelming majority. Endlessly fascinating and often open and generous, the people could be very rewarding to meet but the system made life hard for us and undoubtedly a lot harder for them.

In the 1970s and '80s mainland Malaysia was a fun place to visit. Probably more relaxing then than it is now. The people were almost invariably friendly and approachable in a historical period which was perhaps the happiest time between independence and the present day. The above portrait of a mother with her child at the window of their wooden house had nothing to do with a wonky camera angle - the house was actually like that. It stood on short stilts at the edge of the sea on the north west coast and was quietly sinking into the water. It didn't seem that anyone minded very much.

We've settled in France, much closer to our origins than Asia, but a lot of French customs are almost as foreign. Most villages set aside space for Boules and Petanque players; the games are obviously addictive.

Having started our adult lives working in agriculture, we were surprised to see how much of their agricultural heritage the French have preserved. Not to say that French agriculture is not efficient and up-to-date. It is both. But such useful traditions as transhumance are still alive and well. We met a shepherd and his colleagues bringing their sheep back from summer pastures - a 3-day hike over open country and quiet roads. We were there at lunch time, which in France is excellent timing, and we were fed and wined by the shepherds at the side of the road. The portrait below is of one of those shepherds with his favourite ram.

Amongst the gallery websites that we have looked at there are lots of portraits but few of children. We're not sure why. We have taken quite a few.

'No enemy but winter and rough weather'*

2011-11-23T02:47:00.000-08:00

* "As You Like It": William Shakespeare

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work. Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, mostly as limited editions.

The weather in the Diois is getting colder but the sun shines most of the time and the charms of winter are at least as apparent as the drawbacks. Thinking of winter, we dug back through our archive to our visit to the Pyrenees a while ago. The highlight of the few days we spent near Massat was a morning in the Bethmale Valley. We drove as far as we could through deep snow towards the pass and then walked.
We were struck by an almost palpable silence, the stark simplicity and simple beauty of the valley and its forests of birch trees. The trees against the snow could be inspiration for a Japanese-style pen and ink drawing. Soon after our visit we made a print with that in mind:


BAF0018

So much to do and so little time - we neglected the rest of the RAW files from that visit. But we have a large print in the kitchen and have, at last, dug out the RAW files and have produced a simple set of Fine Art Prints.

Châtillon-en-Diois

2011-11-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work. Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, some as limited editions.

We first came to Châtillon-en-Diois about 10 years ago, arriving by an unusual route. We had hired a donkey to carry some of our camping gear and were on our way down from the Vercors high plateau. Having camped half way down the 1200m descent, we were in good time for lunch. Finding a good lunch with a loaded donkey in tow is not always easy but we went to Le Caveau Restaurant, looking every bit as if we had just spent a week living in a tent, and no one turned a hair. We ate well and grazing was found for the donkey. We thought we'd like to live in Châtillon and now we do.

The medieval village is exceptionally well-preserved, visually outstanding but terribly hard to photograph because it nestles at the head of a valley. We have rather ordinary views from Glandasse to the north and east but these angles are too high and don't capture the background which is so important to the atmosphere of the place. We've tried most of the paths up the hills to the south but they are so heavily wooded that we've failed to find the view we want. We love trees but there is the occasional temptation to take a chainsaw with us.

We've found quite a few pleasant enough views but only including bits of the village and generally not the outstanding landmarks. A few days ago, we tried again and found a quite nice compromise taken from the north. Still no Glandasse in the background - we'll have to work on that.

"What's in a name ?"

2011-11-08T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work. Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, some as limited editions.

Jas Neuf on the Vercors Plateau

We started to take photography seriously (as amateurs) in the early 70s because of something in our lives that we very much wanted to record and, naturally, we wanted to produce something memorable. At that time, we were living in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea amongst neolithic people. The visual record then was slight to non-existant and we had the time and the chance to capture this lifestyle as it was just about to change. We loved the wild landscape and found the people attractive, intelligent, intensely theatrical and engaging and photography was the obvious medium.

In PNG it was the subject that interested us and the photography that allowed us to capture what we wanted to record and, for us, that remains the case. Photography, in itself, is interesting enough but, without absorbing subjects, it's just another job, another technique. In order to earn a living our photography became much more technical over the years and decades and we passed through studio photography, shooting hundreds of bottles of booze with 10x8 Sinars and huge Bron flash power. We were bored. We were good at it and we made good money but that wasn't really the point of becoming photographers. Photography had become more important than the subject as the subjects no longer pleased us.

We moved into photographing huge projects in the North Sea for oil and construction companies and then spent the best part of 20 years going our separate ways all over the world shooting projects for construction, industrial and agricultural clients. Some of the projects were fascinating and satisfying and many were tedious and unrewarding. Most of the satisfaction we gained from this work was from the travel to new places. We remain pleased with the results of those assignments, largely because we sought the highest standards and feel that, generally, we were successful. There are some photographs that we are very proud of but very few that we would want to hang on the wall and very few that we even now include in a portfolio.

We reckoned, as we approached 60 a while ago, that the time had come to return to our roots and photograph only those subjects that please us. That's what we do best. Subjects that we're happy with always make the best pictures and, while the technology basic to the digital revolution fails to excite us, the infinite scope for imagination and creativity makes it worthwhile to struggle with the wherewithal to get there.

There is a puritanical line of thinking necessary in the case of reportage which insists on absolute veracity and insists that what the camera records is the truth that should be passed on. We've never wanted to be so limited which is probably why we have generally avoided such subjects, but then we have not altered our Papua New Guinea material but have restored it. How far this restoration goes is debatable but we have looked at many modern images of Papua New Guinea and find it difficult to understand why anyone should photograph tribal dancing, albeit put on for tourists, and leave a steel razor-wire capped fence in the background. Where does reality begin and end?

Thanks to digital technology and the freedom that it has given us, we've been able to get away from purely photographic techniques or struggles in the darkroom that generally achieved very little. The camera always lies as film and lenses were always incapable of recording reality. Exposure variations between sky and foreground are one of the simplest examples. Colour film has never been the 'right' colour. And on-lens filters were always a blunt instrument. A good photographer with creative cropping, intelligent choice of focal length, speed and aperture could always make the camera lie. We well remember the realisation that many of the images published by charities, or sometimes the press, were of pleasant scenes and happy children degraded to the point of piteousness by the use of Grade 5 paper.

Now we're doing what we like and loving it. We are striving to reproduce what pleases us and, if possible, just the atmosphere of what pleases us. Is this photography? We don't know. And quite frankly this does not greatly concern us. We are seeking prints which we would like to display on our walls in the long-term. Pictures that will always please and, we hope, will please other people too. Some of our work now depends as much on digital manipulation as on photography but we hope that it records what we have seen and been impressed by just as well or, generally, very much better than a straightforward photographic reproduction.

Above is one of our first minimalist workings of a beech forest in the snow on the Col de Vizzavona in Corsica. Wonderful countryside full of atmosphere and the original was a nice enough photograph but we've now had a 70cm x 70cm print of this on the wall for a couple of years and it grows on us in a way that the original image would not have done. Of course we continue to work in a more conventional and, where appropriate, make very few changes. But then, when we wish to, we manipulate the original until we are satisfied, often in several versions.

Above, another of our earlier workings, itself a development from another completely different working of the same original. It's nothing like the original and whether it's still a photograph or not is arguable and, from our point of view, of no great consequence.

We walked to one of our favourite viewpoints on the Vercors Plateau and the clouds came down and obscured almost everything. We liked what we saw and made a relatively straightforward version of the image above. But somehow it lacked something and we recently re-worked it and much prefer the result above, but don't know how to describe the technique. Photography, Print Making, Digital Art ?

In May we spent ten superb days in Venice and loved every minute of it. We shot a lot and even now haven't done enough work on those originals. Let's face it, there is a problem. Venice is still wonderfully preserved, if a little frayed round the edges. The scenes that we have all been brought up with and which artists painted centuries ago are largely still there. But, the romance of Venice is not enhanced by hoardes of motorboats, vaporetti and crowds of tourists dressed in the tedious uniforms that we all wear nowadays. Few cloaks and turbans, no doublet and hose - what a boring lot we've become. To remind ourselves of the Venice that we wanted to see and that, frankly, we found in the atmosphere of the place, we have gone to some extremes in terms of digital manipulation. We like the results which will sit far more happily on the wall than the noisy, mechanical bustle, now the reality. But then there are mercifully no cars in Venice.

Wide Angles and Panoramas

2011-10-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

Please visit our website at www.bowater.fr to see more of our work.

Most of our images are available for sale as prints/fine art prints, some as limited editions.

We sometimes ask ourselves why, apart from sheer extravagance, we buy and hump around so much heavy and expensive equipment. We keep hearing that photography should be simple. But we've never managed to make it so.

We've always had problems finding satisfactory wide angle lenses. Almost all our lenses are Canon L series and we bought Canon in the first place in order to be able to use their first class perspective control lenses. At the time we were shooting industry and architecture for clients and we have never liked converging verticals unless their is a creative reason for them. It just doesn't look right, especially after about 25 years of shooting with technical cameras.

In the 1980's we were shooting a lot of off-shore work for oil companies, especially from helicopters and workboats. 35mm was then barely acceptable for that sort of commercial work so we looked for a medium format solution to dramatic wide angle/panoramic views with a hand-holdable, even from a helicopter, camera. We bought Linhof Technoramas; first the 6x17cm and then the 6x12cm and with the 6x12cm we found that, with its 135mm lens, it would give us the advantages of wide angle coverage without losing the scale of the subject. Our clients loved the results from the Technorama.

One of our first helicopter shots with the Technorama, in this case the 6x17mm. We found the 6x12cm even better.

The digital age has changed all that, not always for the best. The early Canon PC lenses were not a bad substitute as a technical solution for the problem of converging verticals and we used them almost to destruction. But we have never been able to find a satisfactory wide angle zoom lens. We have bought and tried and then sold almost all the Canon wide angle zoom lenses on offer. We are left with only a 24mm-105mm which is astonishingly temperamental and varies in quality from day to day and hour to hour, from excellent to mediocre. But it's a great range of focal lengths.

A couple of years ago we went to Dubai and intended, amongst other subjects, to shoot the Burj Khalifa. We knew that our old 24mm PC would not do the job and were searching for better quality. We went to see Klaus Bothe at Isarfoto near Munich (www.isarfoto.de) and came away with a quite sophisticated and rather chunky Novoflex Panning head. It's a bit of a contraption to put together and quite a lot to carry, but it works and the quality of a well-stitched panorama compares well to a half plate or a 10x8, without the optical shortcomings. It's not just a question of quality. But again we had found a way to produce 'wide-angles with long lens perspective'.

The panning head is awkward to carry and requires a sturdy tripod. Canon's fixed focus wide angle lenses suddenly improved. The new 14mm f2.8 is a fabulous lens and we love the wide angle effect. Level, there is almost no distortion. But of course a mountain in the background loses all drama. Horses for courses.

Two examples of the 14mm's performance taken on the Vercors Plateau.

Still no really satisfactory wide angle zoom but there are two new Canon PC lenses without almost all of the traditional drawbacks of previous 35mm systems or, indeed, any lens systems. The 17mm PC sometimes produces more satisfactory results than we have been able to get with the panning head and, of course, the panning head is not so useful with scudding clouds or people moving about.


An ideal subject for the 17mm PC lens.

Apparently, the new 24mm PC lens is even better than the 17mm - but not for us just yet.

A short while ago we were looking for suitable shots of Glandasse, partly to illustrate our recent blog article on our camping trip in September onto the Vercors High Plateau. Glandasse is a most impressive massif but, with a lens wide enough to encompass it, it fails to impress. We took the panning head out again and were pleased with the results - conventional but satisfactory.

Bellemotte and the Sucettes de Borne

2011-10-23T06:31:00.000-07:00

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All the countryside around here in the Diois where we live is superb. But then, of course, there is always somewhere that excels. The area that lies between Glandasse and The Jocou has an intimacy rare for such splendid scenery. The hamlet of Borne is known for The Sucettes, a rather inelegant name (lollipop) for an outstanding and astonishing geological curiosity. But there it is:

About a week ago we chose one of the last days of 'summer' weather and decided to walk around the mountain of Bellemotte, rather than taking on the summit this time which seemed a bit much for one day. From Borne we headed north towards Le Plainie, following the ravine and stream which bear the same name "Plainie". The stream is one of the prettiest that we've seen in this area with multiple small waterfalls, rapids and glades but, unfortunately, so late in the year, almost no light. We will have to go back at a better time.

We passed the ruins of an old farmstead and crossed some open ground where the first viper we have encountered in this area came rolling down a hill towards us and proved once again that, for us, snakes are best seen at a distance. From the ruins we climbed to the Col de Plainie at about 1420m and were struck by the arrival of vivid autumn colours even before the summer seemed to have ended.

The next step was a descent to the north east on a route that took us around the back of Bellemotte, though mature forests with some splendid firs which, one day, we will get round to identifying. Our favourite beech woods are everywhere at this altitude and very much a native species.

We came out of the forest and stopped for lunch near to a pair of the most handsome whitebeam we've ever seen.

Perfect weather for walking, sunny but not too hot. After eating and dozing in the warmth for the best part of an hour we headed down again to the ruins of the Ferme du Désert, just below the Col de Menée, turned east again and crossed open pasture before diving into another strange, spooky forest on the way to the Col de Jiboui.

Wild and weird woods on the way to the Col de Jiboui

The Ferme du Désert


Carline Thistles, common in this area. Their more specacular cousins seem rare.

From the Col de Jiboui, our highest point at 1620m, we turned south round the flanks of Bellemotte and started a long descent towards The Sucettes with the Jocou and La Roberche closing the view on our left.

First view of the Sucettes de Borne from the north

By the time we had reached the Sucettes which were, theoretically, the main attraction, the sun had left the valley and was lighting only the tops of the mountains. A few days later we went back to get the shots of the Sucettes that we had missed. No doubt that summer had really passed by now as walking in shorts would have been a masochistic pleasure, we tramped through the first frost. But the sun didn't let us down.

Proof of the arrival of autumn

We chose a long route back to Borne which gave us some splendid views of the valleys around Bellemotte.

Local history: the Chateau de Barry and St. Médard

2011-10-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

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About a week ago we left early (for us) intending to walk over the Trois Becs, one of the most dominant formations in the region. As the path was not only closed but surrounded by intimidating notices about the dangers of taking that route we decided against heroics and went looking for somewhere else in the area. In our excellent walking guide 'Randonnées en Diois' we found a walk from Vercheny to the remote ruins of the Chateau de Barry.

Vercheny is the largest wine growing area in the Diois and produces some of the best Clairette de Die and Crémant de Die. The extent of the vines is impressive, all contained in a basin around the valley of the Drôme.

The approach to the ruins is at first through the vines and then by a forest track, climbing about 600m. The length and tortuousness of the route reveal the remoteness of the castle. We stopped for lunch on a small promontary at the summit of the climb overlooking the ruined Ferme de Barry. It was obvious that the farm had been there before we confirmed its presence from the map as trees that had been planted and that don't usually appear in forests dominated the site. Human habitation can be very persistant. Above the ruins, under a rock arch, we saw a chamois resting in the shade.

Tell-tale vegetation reveals the site of ruined Ferme de Barry.

We presume that the Ferme de Barry itself, extremely remote, provided supplies to the nearby castle. It would be interesting to know how long ago the farm was deserted.

The view from the promontary down to the Drôme valley and some of the Vercheny vines.

We spent a few minutes finding the little pathway to the Chateau as it was difficult to believe that the site would be quite so inaccessible. It never ceases to amaze that buildings and works of this magnitude were possible around 800 years ago, especially in such a difficult environment. Were the stones all cut locally? And what sort of lifting gear would have been used to haul them to the top of the rocky outcrop the Chateau stood on? Now, only the base of the keep remains but it must once have been an impressive sight.

The Chateau was built in the 12th Century and despite its apparently impregnable position it was besieged and taken from the Comtes Valentinois by a warlike cleric Amédée du Roussillon towards the end of the 13th Century. During the Wars of Religion the redoubtable bishop spent a lot of his time cutting down to size those who refused fealty to him, whoever they were.

All that is left of the Chateau de Barry.

Even now it's not that easy to take the Chateau by storm as the slopes are steep and forbidding. We made do with similar views from a rocky shelf at the base of the Chateau mound and the photographs of the vineyards below give some idea of the view.

More views of the vineyards from the ruins of the Chateau de Barry.

On the way back to Vercheny we stopped to take a picture of Glandasse way in the distance and which is just above Châtillon where we now live. Interestingly, the same Amédée du Roussillon bought the Baronnie de Châtillon from the Princes of Orange.

The mighty Glandasse rises in the distance, seen from just above the ruined Ferme de Barry.

A couple of days later, intrigued by the historical links and caught up with the area, we took another walk from La Clastre near Saillans to Piégros and then to the Chapelle St. Médard.

We parked next to the church, Notre-Dame de l'Assomption, in La Clastre apparently built in the 12th Century. This church had been a small monastery for 'Chanoines' who we presume were monks who dissented from what was, in effect, the established church. But then, there were a lot of dissenters in the Diois which became a haven for both Cathars (Bogomils) and Huguenots.

Notre Dame de l'Assomption at La Clastre. A small church of great beauty.

From La Clastre a straightforward walk through forests opens out at Piégros with a view of its odd-looking medieval castle and attached church, both again ruined during the Wars of Religion, perhaps by the redoubtable Bishop Amédée du Roussillon.

Chateau de Piégros

From the Chateau the path climbs into beech woods and climbs and climbs more and more steeply to about 840m, just below the toothy rim of the Foret de Saou. It's quite startling to come across the ruins of a small but fully developed priory in such a place. Once again a masterpiece of construction from the 12th Century. Started in 1165 the priory was built to a high and impressive specification. Again, how did they do it? And how did they do it well enough that it is still, in large part, still standing? The monks from La Clastre founded the priory and it was active in one way or another until the 16th Century. Again, we find Amédée, Bishop of Die and Valence, asserting himself. In 1278 he drove the monks out of the priory as they had failed to pay fealty to him.

The ruins of the Priory of St. St. Médard. Easier to photograph in winter.

From the ruins, it's just a short climb to the small Chapelle St. Médard built by the monks at a later date right on the top of the ridge. The situation might seem to have been tempting providence, but it was not until 2004 that this little building was struck and severely damaged by lightning. We had recently come down from the top of Glandasse just before a thunderstorm and were suitably relieved. Lightning is terrifying when seen from the top of ridges and mountains in this part of the world. The feeling of vulnerability is total.

Chapelle St. Médard


Chapelle St. Médard, Les Trois Becs in the distance.

When we dragged ourselves away from this very special view we followed a recommended descent which, in retrospect, seems to have been a little cussed. Extremely steep paths leading in the wrong direction, followed by re-ascents to another difficult path. But again, we arrived in one piece and saw more of the countryside than we would otherwise have done.

Another view of the Chateau de Piégros and the Drome Valley from the steep descent from the Pas de Faucon.

Glandasse

2011-10-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

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We should have missed the best weather but this year we were lucky. We had four days of glorious summer on the Plateau. Glandasse, the extension of the Vercors Plateau that provides a splendid backdrop to the Diois, particularly Châtillon-en-Diois where we live, rises in abrupt cliffs to just over 2 000m. It's a magical place and like most such places it's difficult to get to. There are only a few passes and they are all hard work for the walker and, fortunately, only accessible on foot.

At night, Glandasse is always cold and the biggest drawback is that, being a limestone plateau, there is very little water available, found only in a few widely spaced springs.

The first day from our front door to our first bivouac at Les Assiers meant climbing 1 300m and we were carrying 35 Kg between us. We weren't at all sure that we would manage the load that far and we wouldn't have fancied carrying it much further. On the way up to the Plateau through beech forests we had a splendid view of a Pine Marten and, later on, saw about 20 vultures in the process of cleaning up the carcass of a dead sheep. Since their re-introduction, Griffon Vultures have become a common sight in the region, particularly on Glandasse. They seem to observe walkers from day to day, perhaps out of curiosity or perhaps speculatively.

A lovely evening and a camp site with views one way over the Isère and the Parc des Ecrins, and onwards into the higher Alps, and the other way over Châtillon, that we had left so recently, and the Diois towards theRhône Valley. Being very well-equipped, we slept snugly from dusk till after dawn.


The view down to Châtillon from the first bivouac.

View towards the Parc des Ecrins with early morning cloud tumbling into the valleys.

The night was windy which probably kept the cloud away but left us with a chilly morning. We moved further south east towards the tip of Glandasse, particularly the Royou. There is a steep descent into another of those little lost worlds that we are so fond of. We stopped for a few moments to watch a handsome chamois standing in the sun and disturbed another Pine Marten. This is country to stop and stare and to dawdle in. A few minutes' silence is usually rewarded by a sight of an unwary bird or animal. From a distance the Royou, a cylindrical block of limestone surrounded by cliffs, looked difficult to scale. Closer up there is an obvious and easy route. The view from the top is as rewarding as any. 360° of more or less unspoiled pleasure.


Looking down towards the Royou on the right and across the Isère and Parc des Ecrins.

We'd always been interested in finding Font Froide, one of the few and one of the best sources of water on Glandasse. It's rather inconvenient but quite special. On the way down towards the source we passed a superb maple. Not the sort of tree that we're accustomed to seeing on the Plateau. A sure sign of the presence of water that it must have been able to tap and probably a sign of more persitant human presence in the past. We assumed that, along with some other less splendidly situated maples, it had been planted. Now it is perpetuating a little forest of its own kind.

Isolated maple with the villages of Les Nonnieres and Benavise in the distant valley.

After lunch we headed on to Font Froide. Once in Scotland, we ignored the local wisdom and camped at a place in the Borders called 'Dede for Cauld'. Never again. And judging by the frigidity of Font Froide's water, it would not be a good place to pass the night. A local legend suggests that this source's water is only safe to drink if taken with Pastis. We are living proof that this is not the case.


Filling a water bottle at Font Froide. Shady and damp but with enough hollowed out tree trunks to water an entire flock of sheep.

There is a little used path from Font Froide towards the tip of Glandasse and we walked as far as Echelas and decided not to walk down any more hills that we would have to re-climb. As the summer pastures don't seem to extend to the tip of the Plateau any more, the vegetation was completely different, with long grass and myrtle predominating. Higher up, the sheep seem to have done for the majority of the myrtle. We walked back to Royou and bivouaced on top. A memorable night, perhaps the clearest night we have ever seen. The stars seemed to be touchable. While we felt completely alone, it was obvious that we were surrounded by an abundant wildlife, just keeping its distance.


Evening view north from the Royou.

Morning view east from the Royou with some of the complicated karst scenery in the foreground.

Again, from the top of the Royou looking across the Diois towards the Trois Becs.


Our trusty and truly superior Gregory packs waiting on the bivouac site for an early departure. (Well, early by our standards)

It was time to head north west towards an eventual descent as we weren't carrying enough food for more than four days and water is always a problem. We headed past a colony of Marmottes who didn't show their faces and then disturbed a veritable herd of Chamois grazing on the steep slopes above the Royou. Curious as ever, the Chamois watched us and then disappeared down apparently vertical rock faces - how do they do it?We passed the top of our original ascent from Châtillon, leaving the bergerie to our right and skirted round Pié Ferré. That country is much grander and much less intimate than the Royou and for the last few months had been supporting a substantial flock of sheep.


The great prairie at the Col de la Raille and around the Châtillon Bergerie with a view across Archiane to the Grand Veymont and Mont Aiguille.

A little further on, the landscape becomes far more stony and forbidding, again with Archiane in the foreground, the Grand Veymont and Mont Aiguille in the background.

We planned our descent via La Palle towards the Abbey de Valcroissant. We bivouaced at the top of the pass near the ruins of Malcollet, the remains of an obviousy ancient summer settlement with fine mountain prairies stretching as far as the eye could see. Around our bivouac we saw some nice specimens of the Glandasse Eidelweiss. In the morning, the long descent to La Palle and to the Comptoirà Moutons - a narrow cutting in the local conglomerate made by the people of Laval d'Aix as access to the Plateau for their sheep and an opportunity to count and check the animals on their way through. The path follows a giddy route around the face of the cliffs and then an interminable descent to the Col de l'Abbaye.

Comptoir à Moutons.

Unfortunately, the only feasible route on foot back to Châtillon is via the Col de Caux at 1 100m, another 500m climb. As we were nearly out of water and the day was hot, we filled a water bottle from a relatively swift but shallow stream and dosed it with our purification tablets and hoped for the best. The ascent of the Col de Caux was, by now, a real grind. After that, downhill all the way to the Café de la Mairie in Châtillon. We planned just to stop for a beer but another beer beckoned and by then it was too late to go home and cook so we enjoyed one of Veronique's inventive dishes. By sheer good fortune, we arrived home with the first few drops of a thunderstorm that clattered around for the next hour or two and would have meant a good drenching on the plateau.Four magnificent but exhausting days and we even left a few kilos of surplus weight behind us.

Travelling Hopefully

2011-10-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

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Every generation faces its fair share of uncertainties and these are uncertain times for us all, especially as children of the ‘40s, not yet too old but no longer young. Although we’re a little late for such things, the new uncertainties might have had some maturing influence on us.

The idea of the reward being in the journey didn’t appeal to us much in the past but we were younger then and the future seemed longer and more promising. Probably this state comes to us all as we get older. It feels like wisdom to want to make the best of the present rather than to struggle now for an ideal state of arrival at some unspecified time. Arrival become inevitable and secondary to making the best of the travelling time between now and who-knows-what.

Apart from the march of time, the catalyst driving our change of attitude was the abandonment of our plans to use the equity from the sale of our last house to build an ideal eco house in a village near to here. It was always a folie de grandeur but, before we had altogether taken that on board, the project was spiked by a combination of the ultimate litigious neighbour and an architect so determined to build ‘his own house’ despite our intentions and pleas, and so uncommunicative that we ended up applying for permission to build something that we never wanted in the first place in the hope of changing everything later. What can one say by way of excuse?

Now with all that behind us, we have a little cash in the bank, a lot more time to ourselves and the opportunity to make more of the ‘journey’. The uncertainty of course persists and multiplies. Perhaps we’ve done the wrong thing again but at the moment we are finding it harder to be stressed about the risks than we would have been in the past. A rash of ‘we told you so’ stories from worshippers of other tokens such as the pound and the dollar, the jeremiahs who hoped for the failure of the Euro and who are now indulging in an excess of schadenfreud about something that hasn’t happened but that they hope my become a self-fulfilling prophecy if they continue to magnify it, should worry us about that money in the bank. But then, what can we do about it anyway but enjoy the ‘journey’ and continue in our belief that the Euro has been one of the most successful and humane of economic experiments. Even greater than the Marshall Plan.

Prophecy is redundant especially without access to the levers of power. The world is becoming a better place despite a rearguard action by self-interested conservative lobbies such as business, government, unions, public servants and religions who prefer their own hegemony to human progress. Slowly this bizarre alliance is being undermined by, above all, education, freedom of speech and the ease of communication. We find it odd that the British government is attempting to take away our copyright in our work in the spurious interests of the freer dissemination of knowledge and culture in order to give these rights to huge pressure groups dedicated to the opposing cause who may, briefly, be the only beneficiaries.

Now, as tenants of a nice house, we have flexibility and more chance of directing our own lives and can take the often quoted advice of Steve Jobs not to live someone else’s life. Maybe wisdom has come to us late but not too late.

Of course it was ever so; it just takes a long time to recognise the inevitable. Our blog was not intended to be controversial, political and opinionated and will revert to our original plan.

Much to be hopeful about

Another passing Summer

2011-10-10T02:19:00.000-07:00

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Not just the orchard of France but in the Drôme there is always a cornucopia of good things to eat. In the Diois where we live the local climate and fertile valleys provide for a huge variety of produce carefully grown and of great quality. The most visually striking of all the crops is that of the sunflower. Large fields of yellow heads follow the sun until, one day quite suddenly, the movement ceases and, in the most poignant sign of departing summer, the flowers hang their heads like penitants.

For years we profited from bright yellow fields and huge smiling flowers. This year, it was the pathos of a passing season that intrigued us. Untypically this year the summer didn't end but went on and on gloriously until a few days ago.

Persevering

2011-07-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

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It's three weeks since we posted an article on our Blog and over a month since we started to move house for the second time in just over a year. Now we've moved ourselves, business, cat and everything else into a new rented house on the edge of Chatillon-en-Diois about 16 Km from Die. It's a lovely spot at the foot of Glandasse at the southern tip of the Vercors Plateau.

We passed the last 14 months trying to get a house built in St. Roman, about 4 Km from here. For reasons too tedious and annoying to go into in detail, though eventually practical, we don't think we will be building ourselves a house and hope to be contented tenants here for the forseeable future. It's not what we intended, certainly not what we planned and not something that we imagined we would like very much. Circumstances drove us this way yet we rather like the environment and situation we find ourselves in. We think we can flourish here though we never imagined that it would suit us at all.

On that subject, the plant kingdom does remarkably well, even when the seed falls in an apparently impossible, even hostile, place. Deserts bloom after years lying barren. Plants survive in salt pans, quickly colonise lava and decorate impossible mountain tops and cliff faces. We've been thinking back to a few of the persevering plants that have caught our eye, most of them not just persevering but apparently thriving. Alas, we're still trying to identify a number of these - positive botanic feedback would be appreciated.

Just outside Die on the path climbing to the Croix de Justin. Could be a huge plant growing on a mountain ledge. This delicate plant is in reality very small and is, as yet, unidentified by us.

We haven't even started to try to identify grasses. This splendid tuft was growing in isolation on scree beside the path along the Balcons de Glandasse.

Corsican trees thrive in adversity. We saw these Laricio Pines at Bavella a few years ago, not merely apparently growing straight out of the startlingly colourful rock but playing their part in creating magnificent landscapes and silhouettes.

The most delicate of flowers colonise hostile environments. The first of these three, Primula Latifolia, was the only plant growing in a massive vitrified rock face in the Vallee des Merveilles in the Mercantour. The second, Cerastium Lineare, was growing in dried out clay which, after rain, turns impossibly sticky and slimey and won't even support a boot sole. The third, which has made an appearance in a previous blog, is Primula Vulgaris, growing out of a rock fall not so far from Chatillon.

Quite a while ago, we saw these trees growing out of a hillside of chalky clay on the Catalan side of the Pyrenees. How do these trees manage when even the grass is struggling.

Fete de la Transhumance, Die, 25 June 2011

2011-06-25T15:02:00.000-07:00

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Die is a small place, very much la France profonde, concerned more with the quality of life than with fashions or fads. Transhumance has been a feature of Alpine life since hunter gatherers domesticated and began to herd animals. Alpine summers are fine and warm but the winters are harsh. Domestic animals survive the winters in barns and byres in the valley and pastures at lower altitudes.

The thousands of hectares of high valley meadows and Alpine pastures that flower so gloriously in Spring are probably largely a product of transhumance. Wild browsers in the mountains, decimated by the hunter gatherers, were replaced by flocks and herds driven onto the mountains at the beginning of Summer which eventually created the present agreeable mountain landscape. Without the annual arrival of the of large flocks of sheep and cattle the mountain pastures would grow rank and turn to scrub. The symbiotic relationship between the shepherds and herders and the landscape has worked very well and in regions such as this there is every reason to hope for continuity. Apart from the maintenance of the landscape and the practicality of using abundant fresh pastures for grazing, it would be hard to find a less polluted and healthier environment in which to raise sheep and cattle.

The life of a shepherd, lonely, physically demanding and responsible, doesn't appeal to everyone. Vast distances to walk, months living in simple huts and no great financial reward - and yet there are young shepherds and communities that support them. The Fete de la Transhumance is a celebration of an old and honourable tradition.


The local brass band leads the parade early on Saturday morning to announce the arrival of 2 000 sheep and goats that pass through the town on their way to the Summer mountain pastures of the Vercors.

The flock crossing the viaduct into Die on a glorious June morning

. . . . and crowding into the Rue Camille Buffardel

Arriving at the Saturday morning market in the Place de la Republique


Passing through the market dominated by Die's atypical Cathedral.

Amongst the sheep are some splendid goats, full of character and sometimes a touch saturnine.

The flock passes through and a surprising number of enthusiasts follow them up towards the plateau. The majority stays in Die to continue the celebrations. Restaurants insensitively offer special lamb menus, bands and groups of musicians perform all over the town and on Saturday evening, to continue another honourable tradition, there is an abundance of choice of street theatre - dance, acrobats, jugglers, shows and displays.

La Montagnette and the Vallon de Combau

2011-06-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

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After several days of much-needed rain, we took advantage of a break in the weather to return to the Vallon de Combau and the Montagnette on the Vercors Plateau. Instead of taking the usual well-beaten path we opted for a different route in the hope of coming across something new.

The Montagnette isn't particularly high, being just under 2 000m, part of an escarpment which runs approximately north-south along the edge of the Combau. We clambered up the steep grassy slope towards the rocky summit.


The escarpment to the west of Vallon de Combau with the summit of the Montagnette extreme right

As we climbed towards the rocks, the sky clouded in and the light, being grey and flat and undramatic, was just not suitable for long distance landscapes. So we have chosen some brighter views taken on a previous visit in October 2007 to supplement what we saw this time.

There were rewards for choosing the steeper route. The decaying roots and trunk of a fallen pine, a natural sculpture suggesting Dali or Bosch, and containing almost any caricature you choose to imagine.

The slope is home to a colony of marmottes. The marmottes were too quick for us but there are plenty of burrows and recent workings which is good news in an area that had lost most of its population of these endearing animals. The other main occupants of this little forest are ants; uncountable in their laboriously-constructed domes.

The view from the base of the cliffs is one of the finest in the area and we have chosen the shot below from our previous visit.

View from a limestone pavement at the base of the cliffs over the Vallon de Combau, Trieves, Devoluy and Champsaur with the peaks of the Parc National des Ecrins in the background.

In the view above, the sky is almost clear, as clear as we can get it. This region is on a busy flight path and vapour trails are ever present though, fortunately, the aircraft are usually high enough to be hardly heard. However, the vapour trails sometimes spread and cover the entire sky like a layer of low cloud. But the air here is clear and the visibility often excellent. We used to live in the Var with a distant view of the Mediterranean. In the 1990s from our terrace we could often clearly see every detail all the way across the 40 Km between us and the sea. By the time we left, a year ago, a clear view was a rare ocurrence, perhaps two or three times a year and the guilty pollution was all too plain to see.

Skirting round the low cliffs we walked up the slope to the summit and to the view of our favourite local mountain, Mont Aiguille.

Looking north from the summit of La Montagnette into the Isere, Mont Aiguille and Le Grand Veymont.

It seemed a pity to take the same route back as last time and instead we walked south along the edge of the escarpment and over the Sommet de Rangonnet. Heading south, we walked into one of those magical corners that are such a delight to find. Perhaps a niche with its own micro-climate, noticeably different vegetation, particularly pleasing Mountain Pines and dramatic geology on a small scale. A stage set for Tolkien or a backdrop for a pre-Raphaelite painter.

A deep, probably very deep, cleft at the edge of the escarpment, with its own rock garden, and a view towards the Jocou and Mont Barral.

A fine Pinus Mugo, Mountain Pine, at the edge of the escarpment, shaped by the wind and the long, hard winter.

The map doesn't show a direct descent from the escarpment but an apparent break in the cliffs and a couple of tell-tale names, Pas du Loup and Pas des Brebis, suggests that there is a way down. There is, but we failed to find a track of any sort and the going varied between steep and very steep. It might have been easier to have retraced our steps but less enterprising. After a long descent we followed a stream bed onto glorious meadows at the valley bottom; meadows so carpeted with wild flowers that it was impossible to step between them. On the way down the stream we stopped to shoot a couple of flowers.


Great Yellow Gentian (Gentiana Lutea) and a Dactylorhriza Orchid (at least that's what we think it is). These handsome orchids, not at all uncommon, grow profusely all over the hills and valleys in this area.

The architectural flowering head of a Great Yellow Gentian just before coming into bloom. Another common plant in the region though apparently threatened elsewhere.

Like so many herbs and plants the Great Yellow Gentian possesses an abundance of medicinal and other properties. It is the main ingredient of Angostura Bitters and of Suze - a liqueur from the Limousin. It also flavours an unusual Italian beer. Extracts both from its bitter roots and fresh flowering parts have long been considered effective against various poisons and a general tonic for the digestive system. The root is considered to be anthelmintic, anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, bitter tonic, cholagogue, emmenagogue, febrifuge and stomachic.

As the gathering of wild flowers is rightly strictly forbidden in France, we haven't tried the plant for any of its properties - though we have tried the liqueur.

Joncheres and the Col de Volvent

2011-06-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

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About ten years ago we came to the Diois for the first time to hire a donkey from a local mountain guide, Patrice Weiss, who gave us a superb 12-day itinerary, walking and camping, with the donkey carrying most of our gear. The donkey was a great companion but, as donkeys will, he almost succeeded in persuading us to carry him too. We arrived in Joncheres via the magical Ravine de Trescoussous and spent the night in the village before tackling the Col de Volvent.

The route to the top of the Col seemed particularly long and hard then, probably because our canny donkey decided to stop and get his breath back every 50m or so. This time we drove to Joncheres. The Col didn't seem quite as forbidding as before but was a little less appealing as the lower half has been cut for timber since our first visit and an access track has replaced the lovely old path that used to snake up through the woods. But as the track entered the beech woods above the pine forest it was itself again.

It would be sentimental and illogical to complain about the thriving local forestry industry which goes a long way towards preserving the forests and creating new wooded areas of cleverly-managed and attractive plantations. The managed forests are often at least as attractive to us and to wildlife as their more ramshackle neighbours. And of course they create profit and employment. Nevertheless, it's a pity that the age of timber extraction with heavy horses and overhead ropeways has passed.

Looking down on the perched village of Joncheres from the path to the Col de Volvent

The Col de Volvent, now used only by the occasional walker, was once a busy mule route from the Drome valley into the then more densely populated and economically important valley of the Roanne. The track leads to St. Nazaire le Desert, once renowned for its fairs. The path leads up to the Montagne de Praloubeau which rises to 1525 m and, to the north, the Montagne d'Aucelon, which form a natural barrier between the two valleys.

One of our reasons for returning to the Col de Volvent at the end of May was the hope of seeing the wild peonies in bloom. This year we nearly missed them but found a few still flowering on shady slopes. The peonies are far from common and we don't know where else to find them.

Having found the peonies and the path through the beech woods still intact, we settled down for lunch on the summit of the Gros Moure. The weather was perfect apart from occasional gusts of wind and an alarming roaring, rattling sound from the other side of the rocky summit. We presumed that this noise came from the wind through a tarpaulin or a corrugated iron shed put up by the shepherds who bring their flocks to the mountain pastures in summer. Then we found the true cause of all this drama. A whirlwind, far fiercer than the dust devils we've been used to seeing in towns, came over the summit and headed towards us, cutting off the grasses and small vegetation like a rampaging circular saw blade, about 2m in diameter. It's hard to say how powerful it really was and probably it held no threats for us but it severely shook sizeable pines as it cut a swathe past us, roaring like a train.

Is paranoia winning? After the whirlwind, we were woken from our reverie by huge shadows and looked up to see several Griffon Vultures (Vautour Fauve) circling above our heads.

Our walk took us southwards, down the escarpment towards the Col de la Motte with the magnificent views so typical of this area.

Views over Joncheres and Trieves to the Parc National des Ecrins.

After a steep descent we arrived at the Col de la Motte, once an important junction of mule tracks leading to and from the Drome to the Roanne and the Baronnies. We then took the long and gentle track back down to Joncheres with the magnificent Glandasse as backdrop.

Galerie Art Zone 2

2011-05-31T05:50:00.000-07:00

Our last article, a few days ago, featured Catherine Medico's Galerie Art Zone in Die. It's hard to appreciate Catherine's work from a distance, with its wealth of detail, fascinating and amusing features. Here are just a few individual pieces.
For more about GAZ please read our earlier article.

Catherine Medico, Atelier GAZ, Die


'Cap Lamp' by Bruno Croiset at the Atelier GAZ, Die

Galerie Art Zone

2011-05-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

Very few people know of Die, the administrative centre of the Diois, a small and fascinatingly varied 'Pays' tucked into a corner of the Drome, almost but not quite Alpine. Transitional, intensely individual, a touch bohemian, and only lightly populated. Die is a big village with the services of a town, its own cathedral, a distinctive and independent culture.

Catherine Medico's Atelier Galerie Art Zone reflects the virtues of this unusual place. An eclectic selection of work by local artists. At first glance a somewhat baffling collection of sculptures, jewellery, furniture, glasswork and, at the moment, photography. But the richness and breadth of the collection reward frequent visits.

Catherine's work calls for a catalogue of individual images to illustrate its artistry, inventiveness, humour, sometimes Gothic intensity, and of course craftsmanship. Assembled from cast-off everyday objects that most of us could see no more use for, her creations have taken on a life of their own and have become a range of self-sufficient characters - birds, fishes, and some of those surprising people who pass you in the street. Most of us forget passing characters until we see them again. Catherine recreates them with the precision of three dimensional cartoons.

A visit to GAZ will change your appreciation of a tea strainer, a pair of old sugar tongs, a discarded knife and fork, a crystal wine glass, an old bottle or who knows what else. The whole is greater than the parts. The impact of the finished piece at first disguises the structure, usually something that we or our ancestors carelessly threw away.

Apart from Catherine's work, the birds, the fishes and the flying beasts, she represents in her gallery the work of a number of other local artists. At the moment, some of our Papua New Guinea prints. Finely crafted wooden furniture from Jean Laigret. Lucie Yvon's paintings. Constance Hirsch's inventive wire sculptures - expressive minimalism. Senegalese birds from Dorothee DuFour and Assan Deme.

Jewellery by Christelle Rigaud. Glasswork from Aimee Langlet. Also more of Catherine's provocative pieces.

Metal furniture, benches, display stands and even lighting, elegantly designed, welded and finished by Bruno Croiset.

The collection changes. If only there were more space. Last year, amongst other works, the Gallery exhibited some superb dresses and shawls from exquisite fabrics, all made and designed by a local artist.

There is no shortage of talent and choice of works that deserve more than local recognition. Die can offer only a small market for its over-abundance of talented and inventive artists. Thanks to Catherine's atelier GAZ, there are opportunities in Die and, after that, who knows.

La Gresiere

2011-05-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

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We have much more to say about Venice but a lot of work to do first. In the meantime, worrying that we were missing another generation of flowers in the mountains, we tackled a walk over La Gresiere for the first time. Very rewarding but rather long.

Starting at Les Gallands near to Chatillon-en-Diois, the path rises rapidly into the forest at the moment lit up by clumps of laburnum in full bloom.

The path was hacked out of the mountainside. Around the turn of the 20th Century, one of France's periodic and often very productive social/public works projects was in full swing. Small hydro projects and, above all, massive re-afforestation employed thousands with generally beneficial results which still positively mark the landscape. The path to La Gresiere was the route taken from the plant nurseries to the slopes where vast acreages of largely Austrian pine were planted. When the path reached a massive fault, unperturbed the foresters tunneled through it. Now that less hardy types use the path, a steel cable has been fixed at the entry to the tunnel. We have found a number of these examples of remarkable little engineering works in remote places in France.

The woods are decorated with vivid blue Gentians, Aquilegias, white flowered house leeks, sainfoin and a host of other flowers. The trees are mostly Pinus Sylvestris (Scots Pine) the most decorative of all, Austrian Pine, Beech, a few Oaks, and plenty of Hazelnuts and other shrubs.

For us, it's always the highlight of our day to see something unusual - a plant, a bird, an animal. This time we were rewarded by several Lady's Slipper Orchids (Sabot de Venus). This orchid is relatively rare and grows in few places. It's one of the most striking of the Orchid family.

As the path rises above 1 000m the choice of orchids increases and our chances of identifying one variety from another diminishes. There are also strange Broomrapes in relative abundance. And near to the summit at 1 492m there were carpets of Poet's Eye/Pheasant's Eye Narcissus, just past their prime but still splendid in such profusion.

As the season progresses, the limits of our botanic knowledge become painfully obvious. Growing just below the summit is a mass of white-flowered shrubs which we presume to be Amelanchier. We spotted a number of large orchids growing beneath them.

From the summit of La Gresiere the views are magnificent. To the West a clear view of the valley of the Drome as far as Die and the mountains beyond. To the East, a view over Trieves to the Parc des Ecrins and real snow-capped Alpine peaks.

In the view towards Les Ecrins there are five black dots in the sky, not visible at this magnification, a group of vultures circling above the Trieves.

The clouds were building up and the descent proved to be interesting, even dodgy. With our aging and stiff joints it felt like a sledge ride down the edge of a cliff. The storm was kind enough not to break until we had reached relatively easy going.

Venice

2011-05-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

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We've waited the best part of a lifetime to get to ourselves to Venice. If that wasn't always an ambition it has been for a long time. Now we realise what we have been missing. Venice is fabulous. Fabulous in every sense - not just a collection of extraordinary buildings and art but a piece of history, still very much as it was in Carpaccio's vibrant paintings of the city at the end of the 15th Century.

Venice guide books are even richer than usual in their descriptions of religious buildings and art. There is a multitude of galleries which make the works of artists like Tintoretto, Veronese and Titian seem almost commonplace. It's all worth visiting but it doesn't matter if you're not that way inclined. Venice is the sum of its parts and is more than all its components put together. The city radiates something very special, quite apart from its physical beauty. It grew as an independent republic which had survived for over a thousand years and it still survives in the face of the economic logic that normally dominates our lives.

Gondoliers also defy the logic of our times. Once the main source of transport in the city, the gondola is now a tourist attraction but also a very necessary part of the atmosphere of the city, fortunately paid for by the better-heeled visitors.

We walked and walked and walked, usually lost in a maze of busy streets, some of them too narrow for corpulent tourists. Always a new vista ahead, another exquisite little bridge over another canal lined with yet more extraordinary buildings. Never boring, ever romantic, the perfect place for poets and musicians, artists and photographers, honeymoon couples and, of course, historians and architects. Too rich to begin to absorb in the mere ten days that we had. Why did we hesitate so long; when can we find time to go back.

Piazza San Marco and the splendid Basilica di San Marco. The square attracts most of the passing tourist trade and is often very crowded but apparently it always was. Once described as: "A mixed multitude of Jews, Turks and Christians, Lawyers, Knaves and Pickpockets, Mountebanks, Old Women and Physicians, Women of quality with masks, Strumpets, a jumble of Senators, Citizens, Gondoliers and other people of every character and condition".

The Grand Canal is also busy and relatively crowded but much more civilised than a ring road and much more fun.

A perfect place for a honeymoon.

Many of the views are familiar but there is no sense of disappointment. Seeing the real thing is a similar experience to comparing reproductions of great paintings to the originals. There was no great plan for Venice, it just grew. And those miraculous vistas and the perfect play of light - did they just happen?

Many obscure canals and streets are living works of art.

The Grand Canal is lined with palaces of varying degrees of splendour and, of course, varying degrees of decay. The 19th Century was for Venice as the Victorian era was for Britain - a disastrous time for old buildings which were ruthlessly and insensitively restored to modern tastes. Fortunately, restoration today is on a much higher plane and some recent work has been very good indeed.

The Jocou and Serre de Beaupuy - more Mountain Pines

2011-04-26T03:11:00.000-07:00

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Anyone reading our blog may have concluded that we are obsessed with the local mountains and the Mountain Pine in particular. Yes, but next week we'll be doing something completely different.

Just under a week ago we went back to The Jocou for the third time. It's a dominant, 2 000m, peak offering magnificent views in every direction: to the east across Trieves and the Devoluy towards the Parc des Ecrins; to the north over the Vercors towards Grenoble; to the west over the Vercors towards the Rhone Valley and to the south over the Diois. On Wednesday, the views were as expected but, as so often, a combination of haze and distant pollution over Grenoble and the Rhone Valley spoiled them for photography.


On the Jocou summit looking towards Les Ecrins and a friendly Raven coping better than us with the ferocious wind.

We had intended, for the first time, to brave the more exposed route back via the Col de Seysse. The path runs along a razorback ridge with spectacular drops each side and then descends very steeply to the Col. Given the strength of the wind and our attitude to heroics, we remembered Falstaff's words: "Of valor discretion is the better part". So we returned by a another route through the forest.

The treeline is at about 1 800m and has the poignancy of a battlefield. The Pinus Mugo are the hardiest but even they struggle to survive. Battered, lopsided trees pepper the hillside until the forest establishes itself lower down.

Even at 1 600m life is tough for a tree. A valiant attempt to establish larches culminated in this strange group of lichen-clad survivors, huddled together for mutual support.

One severe February day, a couple of years ago, we approached The Jocou via the Col Vente-Cul which, returning to Falstaff's aphorism, was as far as we got. That time the freezing wind was armed with tiny, ice particles.

On the Col, once again, the Mountain Pines still grow, albeit slowly, in the most exposed situations. Completely ice-bound they must have been encased like sculptures for months on end. Lower down, another elegant example of those redoubtable little trees.

But Spring is here and Summer is coming. This time there was an abundance of new flowers on the path up to the Jocou summit. Pulsatillas in white and purple growing surprisingly right at the top, mostly solitary and delicate in a wild and hostile environment. Anemones and carpets of crocus. The most striking at the moment are the gentians, glowing in the grass.

A few weeks ago we had driven up to the Vallee de Combau and walked up to another 360 degree view - first the Tete de Praorzel and then the Serre de Beaupuy at 1 750m. Again, not great light for views and again the ever-present vapour trails.

From the Tete de Praorzel looking north over Chichilianne, Mont Aiguille and the Grand Veymont.

A handsome lone Mountain Pine, relatively protected from the weather, Les Quatre Tetes on the Vercors Plateau in the background. Lower down, in a sheltered valley, there are stands of beech trees, always decorative and strikingly graphic.

Tussac and the Grande Pigne, Vercors Plateau

2011-04-18T15:15:00.000-07:00

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Another week passed, occupied with necessities that we would have preferred to postpone rather than getting out and doing what we wanted to do. For sanity's sake the hills were calling again and on Sunday we drove to Benevise, about half an hour from here, beyond Chatillon towards the Col de Menee. Benevise is a largely unspoilt little village, sitting up on a promontary at about 700m and usually bathed in sunlight. From Benevise a relatively unfrequented track leads, by one of the shorter routes, up onto the Vercors Plateau at Tussac.

The Plateau has some resemblance to Conan Doyle's 'Lost World'. Not quite as wild and forbidding but intensely atmospheric and romantic and easy to get lost in. Walking to Tussac is not taking any chances. Ours was a relatively easy four to four and a half hours circuit - walking time that is, but wonderfully varied. Tussac is a little peninsula that, like a finger, points south from the Mountain of Glandasse and the main Plateau. In winter the Plateau is a wild and wonderful place and not for the faint-hearted; it used to be the training ground for French Arctic and Antarctic expeditions because of its climatic similarity. In summer it's a centre of transhumance acting as a grazing ground for thousands of sheep and a few cattle from the surrounding valleys. Tussac has several huts used by the shepherds during the grazing season and, in places, the strangely manicured look of a Japanese garden.

We passed by the huts and the open grassland and cut through a forest of mountain pine (Pinus Mugo) to the edge of the cliffs on the west side of Tussac, looking down into the valley towards Archiane. The pine forests were in large part the reason for the establishment of the National Park. The trees had been threatened by a health fad based on an extract from their bark and the wonderful forests of these amazingly hardy little trees were fast disappearing. Now they are flourishing again.

Walking by no particular path through the forest along the edge of the cliffs calls for a certain concentration as the limestone geology is haphazard and treacherous, the trees pushing their way through deep grikes, the vegetation often concealing the edge of the cliff and deep rifts. The cliffs fall in huge terraces down to the valley 1 000m below.

Looking over the cliffs from Tussac, 1 000m into the valley at Archiane.

Apart from the annual visit of the sheep, the forests are left alone and the cliffs are home to a variety of wild life including chamois and successfully re-introduced mouflon. We know they're there but somehow we rarely see them. The other recent and wonderfully successful re-introduction has been vultures which had been absent for around half a century. Of the four varieties introduced, the first two have formed secure breeding colonies and it's difficult to spend time on or near the Plateau without seeing these magnificent birds. Also various eagles which we usually fail to identify.


The mountain pines tend to be chaotic and dense. They live and die on the Plateau and there are fresh saplings everywhere. It isn't a ghoulish fascination that prompts us to photograph their skeletal remains, rather the graphic outlines and dinosaur-like carcases that fertilise the woods.

Bilberry (Vaccinium Myrtillus) sustaining itself from the remains of a decaying tree stump.

Vertigo: leaning over the edge of the cliff to photograph these weird pinnacles promotes giddiness and an other-worldly feeling.

The strange world of the Mountain Pine forest.

From the Grande Pigne we turned back towards Tussac and the view down the valley towards Mont Barral, The Jocou and, in the distance, the Parc National des Ecrins, the snowline defying the early summer-like weather.

Partially protected from the wind, wild narcissus grow in profusion on short stems between Tussac and the Grande Pigne.

The long walk back to Benevise provoked a certain thirst, sated at the Cafe de la Mairie in Chatillon-en-Diois on the way home.

A walk in the Roanne Valley

2011-04-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

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Sunday was not a day for working on a computer. It seemed to be the first day of summer. The modest Roanne River is one of those exciting mountain torrents running in a magnificent gorge, much of it through pine forest, and always sparkling and crashing on its rocky bed. The Roanne drains a thinly populated basin of tortured geology; a paradise for flora and fauna, challenging for mankind.

Last time we were in this valley, ten years ago, we camped near Les Reynauds and woke up to the spectacle of a pair of Golden Eagles warming themselves at the top of the cliffs in the early morning sun. No eagles this time. We started further down the valley at St. Benoit-en-Diois. The light was totally wrong for a shot of the strange little village church, an architectural curiosity for this region. On the other side of the river we climbed through the vineyards towards the crest of the valley.

Old vines pruned, ready for the new season's wines.

The second week in April and at the top of the Serre Bauchard approaching 1000m overlooking St. Benoit and the Roanne it was a brilliant summer day about 27C.

View from Serre Bauchard over St. Benoit and the bends of the Roanne towards the Trois Becs in the distance.

After a relatively modest winter, Spring arrived early.


Blackthorn, sloe, Prunus Spinosa, in clumps beside the path.

The footpath joined the road again at Rimon, a sun-baked hamlet at siesta time.

But, at over 1 000m in its relative isolation, it might be a hard place to pass the winter.

Ancient stable door in aged larch to the lower storey of a house in Rimon where the livestock traditionally lived in winter.

From Rimon, a beautifully constructed but decaying mule track leads back down the 6km to St. Benoit. For us, a wonderful walk through the forest though perhaps before the days of roads and cars the 650m descent and the climb back up to Rimon might have been less alluring. We arrived at St. Benoit with the sun full on the portico of its extraordinary little church.

The church at St. Benoit-en-Diois. It is like nothing else in the region and is a classified monument. Someone must know its history but we have been unable to find out much about it. To us it strongly resembles Corsica's Pisan church architecture but we have no idea why this should be. We'll keep trying to discover its history.

Latest excavations in Die

2011-04-12T03:33:00.000-07:00

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Archaeologically Die isn't Urr of the Chaldees or Chichen-Itza but it has a very long and respectable pedigree. Neolithic menhirs dated 4 500 to 4 000 BC were quite recently found during the enlargement of the local wine co-operative. In 218 BC, Hannibal passed through the territory of the Voconces, the local people who inhabited what is now the Diois. In about 100 AD Die became the capital of the region taking over from Luc about 20 Km to the south. The town grew rapidly as the capital of the Voconces.

Die has substantial Roman connections and plenty of archaeological evidence of the long Roman occupation of the area. The still-impressive Ramparts were built around 307 AD, starting under the Emperor Constantin. Die continued to make its small but singular impression on history when it became the centre of one of the few Protestant enclaves in a mainly Catholic part of Europe. Die's Protestantism deeply marked its history and its heritage.

The present extensive excavations around the Cathedral have revealed a pattern of foundations of a variety of dates yet to be disclosed by the archaeologists. As the photographs below show, there are some interesting, perhaps medieval, columns, pavements and foundations and some heavily carved lintels. We'll have to wait for the report but it is somehow satisfying to feel that we are a continuation of a long history of human occupation, from time to time quite benevolent.


6-sided column Capital and section of stone column, with Die's Cathedral in the background on the Place de la Republique.

A second, larger stone column section found on the eastern side of the Place de la Republique.

Japan

2011-04-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

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We've both enjoyed working in Japan. The singularity of Japan and the Japanese, for better or for worse, makes it one of the world's most interesting cultures. Even when the Japanese adopt western ways they do so in a peculiarly Japanese way. The present horrors that have been visited on them and their country have highlighted their virtues of stoicism, dignity and unselfishness.

It's not all that easy to work out why the Japanese have followed western ways, apart from lack of choice.

Visitors to Kiyomizu Temple Pagoda, Kyoto.

Artistic and restrained, the average Japanese seems ill-suited to the cut and thrust of business and international competetiveness. Yes, the Japanese excel at whatever they do but they seem happiest on misty, drizzly days visiting ancient wooden temples or at cherry blossom festivals in soft, spring sunshine. That's an idealised perception but hard to resist after a visit to Japan and to be all the more moved by the plight of all those ordinary Japanese people who now might well fear even the soft morning drizzle and the seafood they love so much.


'Geisha' adds a striking touch of colour to a typically restrained garden. Tokyo.

Shoren-in Temple, Kyoto.

Touche pas a mon Hopital

2011-04-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

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Supine, unconcerned or entirely self-centred voters are a feature of modern democracries. At first glance, France is no exception. But to an outsider, after a few years, the differences are very marked. The French get out into the streets and protest, usually in a civilised manner. Politicians here are not all that different from politicians everywhere. When they have a success on their hands they want to move on to more dangerous territory. France has rightly achieved the miracle status of the country with the world's most accessible and, in many ways, best health care system. The system is humane, well-administered and, by modern standards, affordable. Nobody needs to be left to die or to deteriorate in misery. Appointments are readily available at short notice and the care is often, if not usually, world class. But, yes, far too many drugs are prescribed and perhaps that might be a good subject for improvers.

As ever, money is always available for a war but the health and education systems are costing more than they are worth in the eyes of the politicians. Less immediate glory perhaps. Political careers are short, major achievements take a little longer. Now local hospitals are being neglected and under-funded, apparently in the hope that the inevitable deterioration will justify centralisation/closure. The small hospital in Die has an enviable reputation for its freedom from secondary infection and its relative efficiency. But, like many others, it is slated for closure just as soon as a way can be found to silence its supporters. Without the hospital, the people of Die will have to travel about 70 km to Valence and people from outlying areas much further. Some people will die but that is the cost of keeping up the defence budget or whatever. Will there be an allocation of funds to transport urgent cases and to improve facilities in Valence?

On 2nd April about 500 of Die's citizens, under the slogan 'Touche pas a mon Hopital', marched from the hospital to the sub-prefecture in protest. 500 is a good proportion from a town of less than 5000. The protests were repeated all over France. Will the politicians take note?

Protestors straddle the Rue Camille Buffardel, the main shopping street in Die.


. . . and, in the Place de la Republique, Marianne urges on the concerned citizens. Only fools underestimate Republican values.

Photographs in Papua New Guinea 1970 - 1973

2011-03-28T02:25:00.000-07:00

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As we've mentioned before, the exhibition in Monaco of some of our Papua New Guinea photographs has just finished. Most of the images were seriously worked on and restored for the first time for the exhibition and are, therefore, new work from our point of view. Following a link on our favourite forum, Pro-Imaging, we saw one of Irving Penn's iconic portraits also taken in the same region of the New Guinea Highlands and in 1970, the year that we arrived there and we didn't know that we'd missed the opportunity to watch the great photographer at work.

Considerable nostalgia and perhaps a desire for reflected glory prompted us to post some of our favourite black & white PNG images that we are now offering as Limited Edition Fine Art prints.


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Elizabeth Taylor

2011-03-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

In 1972 a Papua New Guinea Highlander paid a tribute to Elizabeth Taylor by choosing this magazine page to decorate his headdress.

Col de Caux

2011-03-25T02:45:00.000-07:00

Visit our website at: www.bowater.fr to see a comprehensive selection of our work and a large range of photographs for sale as limited edition prints.

Wednesday is market day in Die. The market expands as the weather warms up and we always try not to miss it. The rest of the day reminded us that whenever we are working in the office most of the time is spent on what seems like pointless administration, working for them, not us.

This morning, another gorgeous day so we packed our cameras in the backpacks, along with a light lunch and drove about 12 Km back to Chatillon to walk a well known circuit: Chatillon to the Pie de Boeuf, then to the Col de Caux and back to Chatillon via the Vallee de Bain, a 14 Km round trip and a 600m climb. We're getting fitter after our winter's computer work but that was far enough for today.

This is truly magnificent countryside. The trees and the shrubs, the rocks and the flowers are all superb and the backdrop of Glandasse, with a few patches of snow still clinging to the slopes, is breathtaking. The paths weave up and down the mountain side and at each bend there is a new and different vista. Look back and it all changes again. The Pinus Sylvestris (Scots Pines) are the most striking of their family with reddening trunks and branches as they age and an endless variety of shape and form.

All this perfection seen by the eye and registered by the brain is very hard to capture with a camera. We've often wondered whether it's the limits of photography or the photographer, but very often we can take our cameras and lenses, tripod etc. on a long and rewarding walk and return with very few pictures. Perhaps the photographer's problem has a lot to do with atmosphere and we will have to satisfy ourselves with cameos. Then perhaps the walk is a progression and, like a jig-saw puzzle, the whole can be very satisfying but it would be a waste of time to photograph the pieces. Some locations work better than others especially graphic landscapes and simple vegetation, or landscape under snow which can be the most rewarding of all.

The walk to the Col de Caux was under glorious sunshine all the way with clear blue skies. Great for walking but our most successful fine art images were shot in wild, atmospheric or even gloomy conditions. Idyllic brightness makes better calendars than long-term art to enhance a room. Threatening skies, impending doom and shafts of dramatic light work best for us.


On top of the Pie de Boeuf looking out over the Diois


On the path leading to the Col de Caux with the Roc d'Ambane, part of Glandasse, dominating the view

Chatillon-en-Diois

2011-03-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

Visit our website at: www.bowater.fr to see a comprehensive selection of our work and a large range of photographs for sale as limited edition prints.

Yesterday, we walked from St. Roman to Chatillon-en-Diois through the vineyards at the foot of Glandasse, the superb south-facing escarpment of the Vercors Plateau. The vineyard workers are busy now tying the recently pruned vines to their supports. Signs of Spring are everywhere. We unloaded our backpacks habitually full of camera gear at the cosy Cafe de la Mairie for a pot of tea and two irresistible apple tarts, warmed, with a scoop of bio vanilla ice cream on top, and flambed Grand Marnier. All this virtuous walking promotes a destructive appetite.

Chatillon is still very much a traditional village in a region at the edge of the Alps. Built for hot summers and cold winters it has not changed a great deal and is now a classified village and preserves its charm. Just across from the cafe the light was just right down a stepped street towards the main road for the view below.

Just over a year ago, when we were looking for somewhere to live, we walked the same route in bitter winter conditions and took this shot of walnut trees and a little stone cabanon, just outside Chatillon.

Living and working in Die

2011-03-22T04:52:00.000-07:00

Visit our website at: www.bowater.fr to see a comprehensive selection of our work and a large range of photographs for sale as limited edition prints.

We came to the town of Die nearly a year ago.  Apart from the unfortunate undertones of its spelling in English, Die is a very comfortable place to live.  Undemanding and a touch bohemian and, strangely, unknown, it sits in a glorious valley at the foot of the Vercors Massif.  For us one of the principal attractions was to find a corner of the real France, relatively undiluted by 'progress'.  Not that Die is backward despite its diminutive size, about 5000 souls, most of the necessities of life and a lot of the luxuries are available here.  And in terms of good wholesome food and an astonishing market twice a week it is way ahead of anywhere else we know.  

Yesterday, we walked out of our front door with our backpacks to spend a glorious warm and sunny day on the Montagne de Bret just north east of Die. The first Spring flowers are colonising the shady spots in the forests with carpets of Primroses and pockets of Hepaticas paramount. Crocus here and there on the higher and most exposed slopes and ridges. The birds are in good voice and there are plenty of signs of sanglier turning the leaves along the tracks and digging for bulbs and grubs. Perhaps it's the place or perhaps the result of our winter spent uncharacteristically indoors, but this year's signs of Spring are more stimulating than they seemed in the past. It's probably this marvellous place.

A lunchtime snack near the Pas de Bret was disturbed by ravens scouting for left-overs and a pair of disappointed Griffon Vultures (Gyps Fulvus).


Anemone Hepatica

Primrose  -  Primula Vulgaris

Glandasse and the Vercors Plateau from Bret

The end of our exhibition in Monaco

2011-03-19T04:15:00.000-07:00

After five weeks - has it really been that long - our exhibition in Monaco finishes on 20th March.  The exhibition was a turning point for us as our Papua New Guinea photographs had been neglected for nearly 40 years.  The opportunity to exhibit them on the Esplanade at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco and the advances in digital technology made it possible for us to produce files from the old negatives and transparencies which, according to some of the critics, were little different from their modern counterparts. The solutions available for restoration are neither simple nor cheap, especially given the cost of 'the best drumscans you can buy'.  It was hard work and we spent most of the winter in front of computers restoring that old work.  But it was worth it and the results were amazing.

The Grimaldi Forum are the most open and imaginative of sponsors and pulled out all the stops to make the exhibition a success. It will be difficult to find another venue as sympathetic and, in its way, as spectacular.

Since the launch of the exhibition we've been getting our breath back and thinking about new projects as well as walking off some of the results of a sedentary winter, working away inside our small, temporary apartment.

Please visit our website at: www.bowater.fr to see more of our images most of which are available as Limited Edition prints.