Stangala canopy
- 📍 Location: Stangala Valley, Odet River, near Quimper, Brittany, France
- 📅 Date: August 2024
Further along the Stangala valley, an old wooden footbridge arches over the Odet river, its timbers worn soft by generations of crossings and half-swallowed by the morning fog. Moss climbs both banks, ferns crowd the damp forest floor, and the whole scene has a folded-in-time quality that makes it easy to imagine other travellers, or other, less ordinary creatures, still crossing that bridge today.
I waited a long time for the fog to thin just enough to reveal the bridge without losing the mystery around it, that balance where you can tell something is there without being able to fully explain what you’re looking at.
The oaks lean in from both banks until their limbs almost meet over the water, and everything — bark, boulders, the stream bed itself — is under the same deep moss. I framed low and centred so the canopy closes across the top of the picture and the stream runs out of the bottom.
A slow shutter turns the current into a pale thread through the middle of all that green. It is the only light-coloured thing in the frame, and it is what keeps the eye moving through a composition that is otherwise a single dense mass.
Awards & Recognition
- Fine Art Photography Awards, 2024: Nominee, Nature
- Neutral Density Photography Awards, 2024: Honorable Mention, Nature/Landscapes
- Chromatic Awards, 2024: Honorable Mention, Fine Art
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
