David Howell Travel Photography and Map Blog

A cold wind snapping the French flag in the predawn darkness.

A harsh spotlight keeping the attention on the vigil. Do not forget.

Quiet, deserted cobblestone streets. The sound of the flag, its cord hitting the flagpole, and the rustling of the bushes are the only distractions….

At low tide this small tidepool is a world apart.

The attached organisms have the small, sandy basin to themselves again. The sprinkling of shells on the rock are exposed to air between tides….

Dreaming about travel. Savoring travel. Remembering travel.

Decent and kind people who you don’t share a common language with. Unexpected challenges. A smile. Patience. A comfortable seat at the window on a long train ride deep into the Alps. Curiosity with rewards. Quiet narrow country roads. Wind rustling the leaves of trees along a river whose name you can’t pronounce. Sheep bells. A muddy river in spring flood flowing out of a Mexican jungle. Birds with impossible colors….

You’ve heard of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

But the ceiling of the St. Tugdual Cathedral, probably not. There are no Michelangelo masterpieces on the St. Tugdual ceiling. And it is in a little town along the north shore of Brittany….

Jeux et Jouets en Bois. Games and toys in wood.

We didn’t know what we would find in Rochefort-en-Terre when we left the coast. It had been overcast and drizzly so I hadn’t been able to photograph as I had planned. But the late afternoon seemed to be clearing so we decided to go for a drive to a village we had read about in the interior….

Shallow tide pool or abstract art?

I know a local painter who loves to paint rocks. She paints rocks in various settings, many of them under or near water. I thought of Julia Bednar when I was scrambling over this intricately jointed pink granite at low tide on the north shore of Brittany.

This is the Côte de Granit Rose, the Pink Granite Coast, near the village of Le Diben, France. The shore is very gently sloped so when the tide goes out, it exposes huge fields of tide pools….

Thatched roof houses are somewhat rare in Brittany. These natural materials are dull and gray. But brightly painted shutters and flowers brighten them.

We saw this old house near a small village called Marzan along the Vilaine River….

Over many centuries, on September mornings, a narrow band of sunlight has shown through stained glass windows onto this small sculpted stone face; unless it is cloudy.

On partly cloudy days the sunlight entering this ancient cathedral is intermittent. As the Earth turns and the clouds float overhead….

This rural road in southern Brittany had very little traffic. It followed gently rolling hills through corn fields and pastureland. There were small patches of woodland and scattered farmhouses.

Even though only a few people drove past this farmhouse it was generously decorated with flower baskets. It had been stormy, but an opening in the clouds let the afternoon sun spotlight this well-maintained stone building.

In stone villages ‘your house’ is a section of stone in a long row of connected and stacked residences. But your portion of the wall of stone facing the street can still be very distinctive.

The character can be defined by the color or size of the stones, or by the types of door and window openings, or the color of the shutters, or even by how you display flowers.