Last week I visited the lighthouse at Cordouan, on the French Atlantic coast, not far from where I live. It’s one of those things that aren’t far, but as a local you don’t do (e.g. when I grew up in Paris it took me many years to visit the Eiffel tower the first time even though I saw it nearly every day).
To get to the lighthouse there is a 1 hour boat ride followed by about 15 minutes in a landing craft (vibes of Saving Private Ryan). The visits can start from the port in Royan or from the other side of the Gironde estuary (largest in Europe). Royan is an hour’s drive from home, so I picked that one.
I took the photo above because to me it represents Royan: it has the modern concrete cathedral situated in the centre of town in the middle, the port cranes, and rigging from a sailboat, and a boat out of the water. It represents the tradition, the industry, and the leisure activities.
I saw that photo on our way out, but I wasn’t in a position to take it. So I had to wait for the trip back to be in the right place. I wanted to frame the cathedral with the cranes, and both with a boat.
I made the frame square to echo the crane window and increase the concentric framing.
Amusingly, the boatlift cabin also frames part of the cathedral. But I didn’t see that at the time, it was too small in the distance (the image below is above 100% magnification).
The camera was my travel Canon 5D mkII with a cheap ass plastic Canon 20-35mm lens. For processing, I simply converted the digital image to monochrome (Tri-X 400 style). I didn’t do anything else.
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