Moon and steeple
- 📍 Location: Aurel, Vaucluse, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
The village of Aurel at dusk, with its church tower and the old rampart wall catching the last warm light, and a full moon already high in a sky that has gone deep blue. The moon is small and the village is small; the space between them is what the photograph is about.
A long focal length was essential. The moon only looks that size when it is compressed against a distant subject, and the only way to place it where I wanted it above the steeple was to walk backwards until the geometry was right. That is most of the work in a picture like this: not the exposure, the walking.
The light is the short overlap when the sun has left the valley but is still reaching the top of the hill. The stone of the tower stays amber, the scrub at the bottom of the frame has already fallen into blue shadow, and the sky is dark enough to hold the moon without the moon burning out.
Aurel sits at the edge of the Sault plateau, at the top of the lavender country, and it is essentially unchanged: a fortified church, a few streets and a great deal of wind. Standing below it at nightfall you understand why people built upwards here.
I wanted a photograph about scale and patience, where a village and a satellite are made to share the same frame without either one being made spectacular.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
