Mountain tiles
- 📍 Location: La Grave, facing La Meije, Écrins, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
The schist here breaks into flat plates that lie over each other on the slope like badly laid roof tiles. I found a stretch where they were almost horizontal and framed straight down onto them, with the range rising beyond.
Upright format, wide lens, camera low. The tiles then fill the bottom half at close range with their edges and lichen readable, and the Meije occupies the top with its snow and its cloud. Near texture against far mass is an old structure, and it works because the two are made of the same rock a few thousand years apart.
The green scrub between the plates is the only soft element and I kept it small. Everything else in the picture is hard, flat and grey, which is a fair description of the ground you actually walk on at this altitude.
People photograph the Écrins for the summits. I spent most of that afternoon looking at my feet, and the pictures I brought back that I still care about are the ones about what the mountain is made of rather than what shape it makes against the sky.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
