Flour moon
- 📍 Location: Saint-Saturnin-lès-Apt, Luberon, Provence, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
The mill stands on the ridge above the village with two cypresses beside it, and that night the moon rose almost exactly where I had calculated, just clear of the sails and deep orange from the dust in the air near the horizon.
Everything is silhouette. I exposed for the moon, which meant the mill, the trees and the ridge all collapsed into black, and that was the intention — a picture made of three cut shapes and one disc, with nothing else competing.
A long lens was essential. From close up the moon is a small pale coin and the mill is enormous; from several hundred metres back with a long focal length the two become comparable in size, and the relationship the eye thinks it sees at moonrise finally appears in the frame.
Getting this right means arriving an hour early, in the dark, with an app and a compass and no certainty. When the orange edge finally broke the ridge exactly beside the sails, I laughed out loud on an empty hillside. That kind of planning rarely pays, and when it does it is worth a great deal.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
