Descent of the mountain
- 📍 Location: Col de la Vanoise, Savoie, France
- 📅 Date: 2023
The last light had already left the valley floor and was holding on only along the upper ridge. In the foreground, a scatter of white mountain flowers was still catching just enough of it to glow against ground that had gone almost black.
I framed vertically and put those flowers at the very bottom, close to the lens, so the picture begins in the grass and climbs out of it. The eye goes from the pale petals into the dark slope, up the ridge line, and finally out to the pale sky — which is, more or less, the shape of the walk itself.
The exposure is deliberately low. I could have lifted the shadows and shown the whole mountainside; it would have been more informative and much worse. At this hour the mountain is mostly a mass you sense rather than see, and the photograph should admit that.
Coming down from a high col at dusk, you get about twenty minutes when everything is quiet and the temperature drops fast and the day is unmistakably over. I stopped in the middle of that, put the tripod in the grass, and tried to keep the feeling rather than the view.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
