Shooting Days

This was the first event where we rent a house in France, at the Cap Blanc-Nez, at walking distance from the sea. Each day, we went for a photoshoot on the beach. Actually there is no beach at all when the tide is high, and a very large beach when the tide is low. The difference between high and low tide is more than 6 meters, and that's caused by the funnel of the Strait of Calais. In the North Sea behind the strait, the tide is limited to some 4 meters.

It's september and the harvest is ready. Some haystacks are used as backdrop. Then we went to Audresselles, in the streets of the small village and on the rocks on the beach. The region is completely different of what we are used in Belgium: no white sand, but different sorts of rocks.

There is quite a lot of sun and it's sometimes difficult to make good pictures. The models (and a german photographer) are not ready for sunrise and we loose some occasions to make real good pictures.

We went to Ambleteuse in the afternoon, at the mouth of the Slack. Again too much sun and not so much places to hide from the sun. The pictures we take look like plain holiday pictures. We were on the wrong side of the river and no way to go to the correct side (it rained a lot in the past weeks and the river was flooded). But it's a nice place that will be used in the next years.

The Cran d'Escalles is the part at sea level, the Mont d'Hubert is the hill at the Cap Blanc-Nez. The name of the village nearby is Escalles. A "Cran" is a small river that has eroded the coastline (cliffs). It's quite a small river, but the soft limestones are completely eroded.

It was the beginning of the white belts craze (still going on...). White clothing can only be used when there is no sun of at sunset (using a remote flash to compensate for the excess of red light). White clothing provides too much contrast and the digital cameras of that time could not cope with a range of more than 8EV. It's less of a problem with film, whitch has a logaritmic sensitivity scale, while digital sensors have a lineair scale. Pictures from digital cameras lack details in the highlights when there is too much sun. Even at sunset it is quite a challenge to balance natural lightning and flash light.

The afternoon we go to the pointe de la crèche, one of my favorite locations. There is always a lot of wind on top of the hill: just take one or two pictures for the landscape and move on to the sea level. This spot is really easy to find: just drive on the Départementale 940 (D940) and park your car nearby the roundabout. The nearby village is Terlincthun. For me, it's one of the most beautiful places of the whole Côte d'Opale. The Côte d'Opale is the name of the littoral region of the North of France (both the départements of Nord and Pas-de-Calais).

It's quite challenging to take pictures of a group of models: there will always be one who has his eyes closed, who looks on the wrong side, who is in the shadow, and so on. Each model should have it's fair share of exposure, and afterwards you can determine easily who will become a real model: he uses more than his share of space and put the other persons present into oblivion.

The next years, we'll go to the same location, but we'll rent a larger house.