Four decades behind the lens. Six years of sharing the journey.
Welcome. I’m Ian — photographer, horn player, and writer living in the Vendée, near the Loire-Atlantique border. This blog has been running since 2019 and shows no sign of stopping.
You’ll find black and white film work, travel essays, orchestra photography, philosophical digressions about why any of us bother pressing the shutter, and the occasional camera review written by someone with strong opinions and a perhaps unreasonable attachment to grain. No algorithms chose what appears here. No agency wrote it. Just forty years of looking, and six of writing it down.
Start anywhere. Stay as long as you like.
Latest from the Field
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Nantes, the green line
Seven years ago today, Killian and I followed a painted green line through Nantes for twelve kilometres. In thirty-six-degree heat. With a Canon 6D Mark II and no particular plan other than cheesecake at Sugar Blue Café, which was, if I’m honest, probably the whole plan. The line belongs to Le Voyage à Nantes, the… Read more
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IJM on the Streets — Nantes: The Book
Ten years of street photography in Nantes, one book: sit down, order the coffee, let the place come to you. IJM on the Streets is here as a PDF ebook. Read more
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Why I wrote the book
Forty years of photography, six years of writing about it, and the question I kept getting asked. Photography from the Heart — what it is and why it exists. Read more
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Montjean-sur-Loire — The Wrong Road, the Right Place
I had no plan, no destination — just a car, a camera, and an afternoon to fill. I missed the bridge at Ancenis, ended up on the wrong road, and somehow landed at Montjean-sur-Loire with a river wider than I’d ever seen. The Canon 6D Mark II and I made the best of it. Read more
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Saints, Shadows and Brass: An Evening at the Festival Saint Donatien
A Friday in May, a Facebook message from an old friend, and a brass quintet about to perform at the Festival Saint Donatien in the Basilique Saint-Donatien, Nantes. I took the Fujifilm X100F, arrived early to hunt for light in the old stone streets around the basilica, and ended up inside one of the most… Read more
Featured Projects
- The UK Chronicles
A solo journey through Britain with the Fujifilm X100F — Northumberland in late summer, the coast at Alnmouth, light coming low off the water. Traveling light enough to actually notice things. - The Film Archives
Black and white film photographs made before this blog existed — Nantes, Clisson, and the Vendée. The negatives had been sitting in binders for years. This is where they finally got out. - Photography Philosophy
Not technique. Not gear. The question underneath all of it: why does any of this matter, and what are we actually doing when we press the shutter? A series of essays without easy answers. - Inside the Orchestra
Three years photographing the Symphonique des Bords de Loire — rehearsals, concerts, and a tour to China. The quiet moments before the music starts, and the ones after.
About the Photographer
A photographer, ever so slightly stubborn, analogue at heart and digital when needed. I’ve been developing my own film since the 1980s. I built this blog in 2019, not for followers, but for focus.
I shoot what moves me, and I hope, sometimes, it moves you too.
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