Sunset along the Promenade du Peyrou

Feb 19

Written By Jim Nix

Sunset in southern France - yes please!

I love sunset, and everyone loves France, right? I have been lucky enough to visit France twice in the last couple of years, and boy do I ever love that country! It seems like everything is beautiful, at every turn - it makes it very hard to walk around and get anywhere. It seems like every 10 seconds I am firing away at something.

Maybe that's why I came home with 5000 photos in a 2 week trip. <grin>

The first part of this trip (which occurred in November last year) was to Montpellier, which is a beautiful little city in southern France, situated in the Languedoc region. It's not technically a little city, but it feels that way to me. The core central district, where I spent all my time, was compact and easily walkable.

It was large enough to give me plenty to shoot and not get bored, but not so large that you feel overwhelmed (which is a little like what Paris feels like, although I freakin' LOVE Paris, to be clear!). I spent 3-4 days there, and that was just perfect. I shot a lot and saw a lot, and it was wonderful. I hope to be able to return.

One thing I had read about prior to arriving (I always do pretty extensive research before I go somewhere, and print out a map of the city with marks on all the spots I want to shoot) was their old water tower in the park area known as the Promenade du Peyrou. The pictures I could find piqued my interest, though it's always hard to tell what something is really like until you see it yourself.

That's why we travel, isn't it?

So I headed out one afternoon, with my fingers crossed for both good light and a worthy destination, and I was rewarded on both counts. The Promenade du Peyrou is a nice open space, with that glorious statue of Louis XIV astride his stallion.

Beyond that, I found the water tower and being a lover of architecture, I just had to get closer and shoot it. At the same time, it was obvious that the light was coming together quite well, and so I spent quite a bit of time here, firing away at this angle and that, taking it all in.

So today's post is a collection of a few shots from that evening, though I must say I have hundreds more that I need to find time to process and share. That's another way of saying you will see another post or two about all that at some point. :-)