Blessed fields
- 📍 Location: Hérouville, Le Vexin, France
- 📅 Date: November 2024, evening
The small stone chapel of Saint-Robert stands alone in the open plains of Le Vexin, near the village of Hérouville, with a single bare tree keeping it company at the edge of the field. Le Vexin is farmland country, wide and unbroken, the kind of landscape where a single vertical shape, a chapel, a tree, ends up carrying the whole composition.
I caught this one on a winter evening, in that pale, hushed blue that settles just after the sun has gone but before real dark arrives, smoothing every furrow of the ploughed earth into soft parallel lines running toward the treeline. Nobody else was around: just the chapel, the tree, and that quiet blue hour hanging over everything like a held breath.
A single tree and a small chapel share a horizon that has nothing else on it. I placed them well apart and kept them both small, with the field taking most of the frame, because the distance between the two is what the picture is measuring.
The light was cold and even and the sky almost without cloud, which suited the subject: a building meant for gathering, standing alone in an empty field, photographed at an hour when nobody was coming.
Awards & Recognition
- European Photography Awards, 2025: Honorable Mention, Fine Art / Landscape
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
