Le forgeron

Best in large.

A very different day today, concentrating on low light photography. In the morning we went to the mill in Bias, where there is a forge run by volunteers; they had opened it specially for us. What a wonderful place for photos. The cheerful blacksmith André started working in the forge with his dad when he was 14, and he is now 78. He obviously loves doing it and enjoyed telling us about it.

It was a wonderful environment for taking photos; as well as the fire there was an open door from which daylight fell onto the smith's face and dimly illuminated the masses of old tools on the walls. Pete suggested we would want to convert to mono to eliminate the ugly blue of the bleu de travail he was wearing. But try as I might (and I did) I couldn't prefer the mono version to this one. I didn't want to lose the contrast between the soft light from the door and the glow of the fire and the hot iron. Opinions welcome!

There's a working watermill there as well, with an unusual horizontal wheel, so he showed us that in action, and I bought a bag of flour. It was much less photogenic than the forge though -- I was really pleased with my photos there.

After lunch we went to the church in Allemans du Dropt (see last year's blip) and used our tripods, and then on to the church in Le Mas d'Agenais, where there is a Rembrandt on the wall. More good tripod experience, even if my photos were nothing to write home about.

It was a full day, and now it's time for un petit verre before heading out for dinner ...