The Height of Summer

The Story Behind This Photo #

The confluence of the Creuse and Sédelle rivers is one of my absolute favorite locations in the whole of France.

It features:

• two rivers
• the village of Crozant in the background
• ruins of a fortification built in 1018 to guard the border of Aquitaine.

There has been habitation in the area since pre-historic times and the name Crozant is a derivative of a Celtic word crosus, which means deep valley. This is also the purported origin of the name for the whole department, la Creuse as well.

What is more interesting that the village of Crozant depicted in the background is the de facto birthplace of impressionism. Even if the most famous impressionist painter is Claude Monet and his painting “Impression, soleil levant” is what gives name to the form of art, Crozant is the place which invited painters from all across the world to stay at the row of four cabins situated on the hillside. This was thanks to a local painter called Armand Guillaimin, who was able to devote his life to impressionism after he won the lottery. Claude Monet himself spent some time in a close by village of Fresselines and apparently he was so inspired by the area that he painted scores of painting during his stay.

This image is also one of my absolute favorite landscapes I was able to capture while I was living in the area. It features the last rays of the setting sun painting the landscape in a golden hue. Just moments after, the magic dissapeared as the sun set behind the hillside right of the image. I was very happy to get this shot, since you have to be on location exactly at the right time. The light of the sunset does not last long because the area is in such a hilly region.

Some Thoughts on the Use of This Image #

I think this image would be the perfect center piece of a living room wall for any France or history buff. This scene is full of history and you get the feeling of standing on top of the cliff facing the castle ruins during a hot summer evening. For this image the larger a print you get, the better the sense of immersion will be. It is also so full of small details and hues, which only come out through a large print.

Image Details #

If you want to buy a digital copy of this image, it has the default form factor of 1.50. You can easily crop this image even to 16:10 or even 16:9 should you have device whose monitor uses that form factor. Depending on your operating system, you may even be able to use the image as is without cropping it or scaling it down.

Suitable Print Dimensions #

Should you want to buy a printed product of this image, the following size fits the image form factor and does not cause cropping. The size in centimeters is approximate, since the dimensions of photographic paper are traditionally expressed in inches, such as 24x16.