A weekend euro-tunnel break seemed like as good an excuse as any to dust of my Pentax 6x7 and finally work through that the bag of expired film that has been in the fridge for a while.
We'd timed the trip at the end of the tourist season, so the whole place was as quiet as a very quiet church? In fact, the only sound in the whole place was the ke-CHUnk of the 6x7 shutter, and me muttering to myself as I wandered around trying to figure out the best for meter reading as the sun appeared and disappeared through the stained glass.
As mentioned, we travelled at the end of the holiday season, and the weather reflected this. Heavy mist and fog made driving through Brittany less than interesting. It did however give a very surreal air to the already odd French motorway rest stops. 60s concrete, mist soaked grass and limited visibility made for a distracting exercise in composition.
On the way back to the train the next day, a quick stop to look at some pill-boxes in Wimereaux led to a wander along the cliff-top and that led to us stumbling upon the ruins of Fort de la Crèche leading all the way down to war ruins sitting out at sea. More light metering and even more mumbling ensued as I tried to mentally compensate for a polariser, an ND filter, a gradient filter and reciprocity laws in order to get the shutter to slow down enough for the water that I wanted. The model in this final shot is a random hunter who happened to be wandering around the beach (hunting season starts when the tourists have gone apparently). Luckily for me, he managed to stand perfectly still and give a nice sense of scale to the seascape.
Finally, it is nice to get film back in the post again. Processing was done by AG Photographic. Scanning was done by me, and retouching was minimal.
As mentioned, we travelled at the end of the holiday season, and the weather reflected this. Heavy mist and fog made driving through Brittany less than interesting. It did however give a very surreal air to the already odd French motorway rest stops. 60s concrete, mist soaked grass and limited visibility made for a distracting exercise in composition.
On the way back to the train the next day, a quick stop to look at some pill-boxes in Wimereaux led to a wander along the cliff-top and that led to us stumbling upon the ruins of Fort de la Crèche leading all the way down to war ruins sitting out at sea. More light metering and even more mumbling ensued as I tried to mentally compensate for a polariser, an ND filter, a gradient filter and reciprocity laws in order to get the shutter to slow down enough for the water that I wanted. The model in this final shot is a random hunter who happened to be wandering around the beach (hunting season starts when the tourists have gone apparently). Luckily for me, he managed to stand perfectly still and give a nice sense of scale to the seascape.
Finally, it is nice to get film back in the post again. Processing was done by AG Photographic. Scanning was done by me, and retouching was minimal.
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