Pine shapes
- 📍 Location: Cap Canaille, Provence, France
- 📅 Date: November 2024
Above Cap Canaille on the Provençal coast, one of the highest maritime cliffs in Europe, a single umbrella pine has grown into a shape that looks drawn rather than grown, its flattened crown holding still against a Mediterranean sunset of orange, blue, and violet. Below, the sea carries the same colours in a soft, shifting reflection that leads the eye out toward a distant island on the horizon.
I waited for the tree’s silhouette to sit exactly between the sun and the water before releasing the shutter, so its shape would read almost like a piece of calligraphy against the sky, one clean stroke holding the whole composition together.
The pines on this cape grow flat-topped and pushed sideways, and against a low sun they stop being trees and become shapes. I worked the frame until the branches of one of them read clearly as a silhouette without touching the edge of the picture.
Exposing for the sky drops everything else to black, which is the point. What is left is an outline, and that outline is what thirty years of wind on an exposed cape has been quietly drawing.
Awards & Recognition
- Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3), 2025: Honorable Mention, Nature/Sunrise-Sunset
- European Photography Awards, 2025: Honorable Mention, Fine Art / Golden Hour
- International Photography Awards, 2025: Official Selection, Nature-Landscape
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
