Normandy

I've just come from two days in Normandy. We visited the city of Saint-Malo. The interior of the okd city was destroyed by American bombers on the erroneous intelligence that there was an important German garrison located there. But it was entirely rebuild inside the existing ramparts in the historic style.

It was a foggy morning for the visit.

We then went on to the iconic Mont Saint Michel. As we approached the island, it began to rain. There is nothing like walking up Medieval cobbled streets angled at about 30 degrees as water flows down them and rain falls from above. We reached the highest point, the church of the abbey, then began to make our way down. In the gardens on the parapets, we experienced nothing short of a tropical downpour - although the temperatures were hardly tropical.

Despite umbrellas, jackets and hats, we were drenched in seconds. We simply followed the fast rushing water down.

Friday, we visited the cliffs of Arromanches, Omaha Beach and the American cemetery above Omaha Beach. The sacrifices of the men of D-Day and the following battles touched us all in a profound way. I will never think of this time in history in the same way.

Saint-Malo ramparts and harbor

It's a cliché photo, but it is different if you were there.

Like something out of a Gothic novel.

The courtyard of the abbey, some 200 meters above
the surrounding sea.

Cloë, in some of the amazing light of the cloister

At low tide, Mont Saint Michel is surrounded by a sea of sand.

Avery stood like this for over five minutes, overwhelmed
by the artificial port the allies created in just three days
at Arromanches

Notre Dame des Arromanches

Omaha Beach extended for over 45 kilometers.

A colcliquot at Arromanches (I don't know the English
for this flower).

A sculpture called "Les Braves" on Omaha Beach, created
for the 70th anniversary.

"Les Braves"

A moving monument in a sea of monuments

A granite map of the Débarquement leads to a reflecting
water flow - powerfully moving.

I now find myself in the Brittany region of France. These images are from an amazing place called Pointe de Pen-Hir. It is a rugged outcropping of stone at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, worn through by wind waves and rains.While I was there, it was warm and sunny, cold and windy, cold driving rains, then warm again - within less than two hours!

These are called "Les Tas de Pois." I'm not sure who
looked at them and thought "heaps of peas," but that
is the translation.

Just beyond the savage rocks lies a calm beach.

"Girl praising nature"
(Okay, it should be "Girl tying shoe" but I like my title better)

"Fille à la plage"

a girl in France

I created these photos of my student, LeAnn Fox, in Amboise, France. Her friends were shopping and she was bored with it. She came outside and waited with me. After six days of me photographing their every movement, it was difficult to find real expressions on the girls' faces. I shot these without looking in the viewfinder. LeAnn's look was so evocative, but I didn't want her to know I was shooting. The image above came when she heard the shutter. I first called it "femme dans la rue" after the woman walking up the street. But I have named it after the words on the left in the image, "chaussures vous vont si bien".

The image below is simply, "fille dans la rue."

Boats should not be in snow.

Airshow

I attended the Lunken airshow in Cincinnati in early September. There was a WWII B-17 on display. You could actually go through it. Crawl through it is more like it. There was a mother and daughter who were dressed as 1940s girls. My contact got me to the head of the line at the B-17, but I let the "B-girls" go ahead of me. As I got to the tail of the airplane, a wanna-be lady photographer chased me back. She was taking a photo of the "B-girls" in the rear jump seat and didn't want me in it.

I backed up, but realized the photo was not the front-on picture the wanna-be was snapping (even though her camera was every bit as good as mine), but the real image was the women lit by the ambient light coming through the rear door of the airplane. 

It is moments like this that I regret that the camera manufacturers have convinced the public that anyone can be a photographer if they buy a good enough camera. It's not the tool, but the craftsman who wields that tool. (Sigh)

The instruments don't look that different from the ones I trained on in the 1990s. An altimeter is an altimeter.