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.
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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 melting. The AE1, a roll of HP5+ rated at 100, and whatever the evening put in front of me.
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I know it’s been quiet here, but that’s just the natural rhythm of accumulating material before bothering to process it properly. Jardin Extraordinaire, Voyage à Nantes, a zoo visit, and Normandy have all given me photographs and notes. New posts are coming soon.
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I asked an AI to show me what ijmphotography.net looks like, and it gave me back a Parisian bridge that doesn’t exist in Nantes. But it got everything…
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There’s a photography blog I keep coming back to, and I want to tell you about it. Monochromia is a collective — photographers from Chicago, Nuremberg, Rome, Washington D.C., and a village on the Nile, all posting one black and white image at a time with barely a word of explanation. I contribute the occasional shot from France, which makes me biased. It also makes me a better photographer.
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A day trip to Paris with my daughter Kate in July 2020 — the Louvre, the Pyramide Inversée, and more steps than anticipated. Shot on Fujifilm XT2. Republished six years on.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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May 1st: the first day of the Month of Our Lady. I loaded the Canon AE1 Program with Fomapan 100 and drove to La Rabatelière to photograph the Sanctuaire de la Salette. What I found was a burned church, an axe-marked door, a miller’s millstone, and a hillside full of statues built in defiance of the Republic. The Vendée remembers.
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The Olympus Trip 35 is one of the most iconic film cameras ever made — compact, battery-free, and surprisingly capable. A hands-on review with sample shots from my local countryside.
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