Bridge falls
- 📍 Location: Pont d’Espagne, Hautes-Pyrénées, France
- 📅 Date: 2020
The old stone arch crosses the gorge just above the point where the whole river folds into a single white chute. I framed vertically because the subject is a drop, not a view: the bridge at the top, the fall in the middle, the turquoise pool at the bottom, and the eye obliged to travel down the picture the way the water does.
A long exposure was not a choice here so much as a necessity — the light in a gorge this deep is thin, and the seconds it takes to expose correctly are exactly the seconds that turn the torrent into a continuous white ribbon while the mossy walls stay perfectly sharp.
The rock is dark and wet and holds almost no detail until you look for it, so I kept the trees leaning in from both edges as a frame. They close the top of the image and keep all the brightness in the centre, where the water is.
The noise at the foot of a fall like this is total; you cannot hear a person speaking two metres away. I like photographing sound I cannot record, and the whole intention of this frame was to make something that looks as loud as it felt.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
