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….

It had been a pleasant spring day. Sailboats raced across the lake in competition under blue skies, with only a few scattered clouds.

The winds had been moderate along the shore. The sound of the rustling leaves was more of a wind chime than a warning….

In a quiet glacial canyon in Les Pyrénées Parc National the tallest waterfall in Europe pounds onto the jumble of rocks at the base of Cirque de Gavarnie.

The Cirque de Gavarnie retains a few remnants of the glaciers that carved the sheer wall. The cirque wall is up to 1,500 meters (~4,900 feet) in height and 3,000 meters (almost two miles) wide. The small glaciers hang in the ledges high above the canyon floor and their melt water feeds the waterfall which is called la Grande Cascade….

A warm afternoon in the shade.

In a quiet back corner of the park. The bird songs mix with the background traffic sounds of Paris.

You have the last throw. Your teammate is depending on you to find a way to get closer to the bright orange cochonnet….

Yvoire, France is a beautiful medieval stone village.

It is easy to imagine the setting of village life in the mostly intact old town section. It is harder to realize the difficulties of providing food, water, and defense for this lakeside village.

Yvoire is on the south shore of Làc Leman (Lake Geneva) on a prominent point between Geneva and Évian-les-Bains….

I have never understood why people put flames on the side of cars. It is an odd tradition.

But I didn’t go through a hot rod phase. To me cars are just transportation-utility. The quieter, the better. Quiet means efficiency and good engineering. But I guess some guys need their car to be loud to get attention or their diesel truck to sound like a … garbage truck. Why?

But the pilot of this helicopter, man or woman, is driving a hot rod. I guess you deserve to paint bright yellow flames on your transportation if you are running on Jet A fuel screaming over jagged mountain ridges….

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….

Skiing into the clouds.

Follow the tracks to the lip of the chute. This is a testing ground for courage, skill, and route-selection. But you will need an experienced mountain guide….