Four decades behind the lens. Seven 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, Art, and maybe a little history, or things that make you go, “hmmm….” No algorithms chose what appears here. No agency wrote it. Just forty years of looking, and seven of writing it down.
The panama hat, the walking stick, the hearing aids, the beard, have become characters in this story.
Start anywhere. Stay as long as you like.
Latest from the Field
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The Merville Battery
I went to the Merville Battery in August 2019, between Pegasus Bridge in the morning and the war cemetery at Ranville in the afternoon. I wrote about both of those and never wrote about this, and the photographs sat on a disk for seven years. This is the part of that day I had let… Read more
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A Family Is a Timeline: Weddings, White Hair, and the Roads of Normandy
On the passage of time: through a family, through a landscape, and through the photographs we leave behind. On the 8th of August I watched Maureen marry Maciej. Read more
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Film, words, and a new shop
For forty years, I have been taking photographs. Mostly on film. Mostly in the Vendée, Nantes, and the UK, with a few detours to places like China. For a long time, those photographs just lived on my hard drives, or in boxes in the attic. Recently, I decided it was time to do something with… Read more
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Jardin Extraordinaire: This Time I Actually Looked at the Map
I headed back out with the Canon AE1 Program to capture more of the Voyage à Nantes, this time at the Jardin Extraordinaire—a hidden garden carved into an abandoned quarry. With the car at 48°C, it was sweltering, but the wandering through Chantenay and an unplanned brewery visit made the day worth every frame. Read more
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Voyage à Nantes: Following the Green Line
It was 46°C in the car when I set off and 40°C by the time I reached Place Graslin, which is not the weather for walking a city. But Le Voyage à Nantes paints a green line through the streets and I wanted to follow it, at least as far as I could manage without… 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. - If you’ve been reading this site for a while and there’s a frame that stuck — the street, the light, something from China, the Vendée, Nantes, wherever — I can probably make you a print of it. Just send me a message.
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.
Stay in Touch
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