Enchanted forest
- 📍 Location: Gorges du Stangala, Quimper, Brittany, France
- 📅 Date: 2024
Everything in this wood is covered — trunks, branches, the rocks between them — in a moss so thick that the bark has disappeared under it. There was mist in the trees that morning, and the light coming through it was already green before it reached anything.
I chose a low viewpoint among the ferns and framed a group of oaks whose limbs cross each other at head height. The crossing is the composition: it builds a rough vault over the centre of the picture and turns a patch of forest into something with a ceiling.
The mist is doing the separating. Without it the wood would be an undifferentiated mass of green; with it, each rank of trunks is a slightly paler grey than the one in front, and depth appears without any help from the light.
Brittany has a long habit of putting stories into its woods, and standing in this one at seven in the morning I stopped finding that surprising. The intention behind the frame was not to illustrate a legend but to photograph the exact conditions under which a person might invent one.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
