The old barns

Old Barns in the Alpes de Haute Provence

During my last drive through the Alpes de Haute Provence, i was not so far from Manosque when i saw these old barns in a very rural landscape under the warm light of an almost raining afternoon.

I'm always amazed when i see some photographs or paintings of American or Canadian old barns. They are usually more pretty and impressive than these ones but that kind of view is rare enough in our country to make me stop on my road.

Some new images of the Verne river

Waterfall on Boulin stream
just before it's junction with the Verne river

In my last post about this place i was saying that i would probably not return there this year because of the low water level at the end of spring ...

But last week we had some impressive flash floods killing more than 20 peoples in our department. Fortunately, the huge forest were we live seems to have some very good natural protections and although some huge amounts of rain nothing realy bad came in our area.
That said, at least it puts some water in the rivers. So this morning i woke up before 5 am and went to the place where the Boulin stream joins the Verne river.
Climbing at 6 am on little cliffs covered by wet moss is always an amazing experience when you wear rubber boots but nothing went wrong and i could make a few interesting and i guess rare images before 8 am.

I love this place because it's wild and unknown and probably also because my inconscient knows that these little streams and rivers are the life sources of our country : A few kilometers far from these little waterfalls, the Verne river is "closed" by a dam and it's lake is the main source of drinking water for the Saint-Tropez area ...


Junction between Boulin stream and Verne river

Notre Dame de Pitié

Notre Dame de Pitié at Collobrières in Provence

This little chapel is about 100 meters far from my home.
I've ever posted another HDR view of its interior some years ago, this one is really more quiet :)

For people interested in the technical side of photography, the final image was obtained by tonemapping the same HDR file once with Photomatix and once with Picturenaut. The 2 resulting TIF files were then blended.

Rural landscape under the clouds near Manosque in Provence

Rural landscape under the clouds

I spent a few days in the Alpes de Hautes Provence region about one week ago.
On sunday i was driving back home across a very rural countryside and decided to stop on a little path to catch some of these cereal fields under the storm light.

I also stopped a few kilometers after this place when i saw some realy old barns. I'll probably post one or two images here next week.

Running water in the Abatesco river - Corsica

Running water in the Abatesco river - Corsica