Rock sundial
- 📍 Location: Roc la Tour, Ardennes, France
- 📅 Date: May 2024
At Roc la Tour in the Ardennes, two ancient rock towers stand just far enough apart to leave a narrow gap between them, and at sunset the sun lines up through that gap for only a few minutes, throwing a brief starburst of light across the stone: for a few minutes each year, this place tells the time, which is where the title comes from.
Local legend claims these ruins are what remains of a castle built in a single night through a pact with the devil, a bargain undone at the last second by a rooster’s premature crow, its walls collapsing down to the Semoy river below. Whatever the truth of it, the place feels like something that was built, then deliberately unbuilt.
The blocks here stand close enough together to leave narrow gaps between them, and at the right time of year the sun sets into one of those gaps. I found the alignment by walking the slab until the disc appeared in the slot, then set the tripod and waited.
Stopped well down, the sun becomes a clean star wedged between two masses of stone, with a thin lit edge on either side of it. The name came afterwards, from the obvious fact that these rocks had been telling the time here long before I arrived with a camera.
Awards & Recognition
- Fine Art Photography Awards, 2024: Nominee, Landscape
- Chromatic Awards, 2024: Honorable Mention, Nature
- Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3), 2024: Honorable Mention, Nature/Sunset-Sunrise
- European Photography Awards, 2024: Honorable Mention, Landscape (France Photography)
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
