Spring waters
- 📍 Location: Cascade des Tufs, Les Planches-près-Arbois, Jura, France
- 📅 Date: 2023
In spring the spring runs at full volume and the tufa wall pours from top to bottom, but what changes most is the pool below. It fills, spreads, and starts spilling over the flat shelves at the front in a second set of much smaller falls.
So I turned away from the wall and framed for the foreground instead. The shelves step towards the lens, each one with its own thin curtain of water, and the main fall is left in the upper third where it belongs — present, but no longer the whole subject.
Several seconds of exposure smooth the pool into a pale green plane that separates the two halves of the picture. That plane is what makes the composition work: it gives the eye somewhere to rest between the busy wall above and the busy shelves below.
I have photographed this place three times now and it has given me three different pictures. That is rarer than it sounds, and it is the main reason I would rather return to a handful of locations than collect new ones.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
