River of rocks
- 📍 Location: Forest of Huelgoat, Brittany, France
- 📅 Date: 2023
There is a stretch here where the river has disappeared entirely and what runs down the valley is stone. Granite blocks, all rounded, all mossed, filling the bed from bank to bank, with the water audible somewhere underneath them.
I framed upright with the boulders running away from the bottom of the picture and the oaks leaning in overhead. The frame is deliberately busy — there is no clear path through it — because that confusion is what the place is. Composing it into something tidy would have been a lie.
Light came through the canopy in patches and I waited for a moment when the brightest of them fell on the middle distance rather than the foreground. That puts the light where the eye needs to travel to, and leaves the near stones in shade to frame it.
This wood was a place of assembly and legend long before it was a tourist path, and the strangest thing about it is how normal it becomes after an hour. You stop noticing that you are walking on a river.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
