IJM Photography

04/09/2026

The Merville Battery

I went to the Merville Battery in August 2019, between Pegasus Bridge in the morning and the war cemetery at Ranville in the afternoon. I wrote about both of those and never wrote about this, and the photographs sat on a disk for seven years. This is the part of that day I had let go of....

One hundred and fifty men instead of six hundred, no radios, six torpedoes instead of sixty. The Merville Battery raid — and photographs I forgot I had.

28/08/2026

A Family Is a Timeline: Weddings, White Hair, and the Roads of Normandy

On the passage of time: through a family, through a landscape, and through the photographs we leave behind. On the 8th of August I watched Maureen marry Maciej. There is something peculiar about a family wedding when you have been around long enough to have seen several generations grow up. Maureen is one of Jean-Claude's three daughters, and the last of them to marry....

A family wedding in August, a week in Coutances, and a landscape that keeps its history close. On timelines, family and otherwise, and what photographs are actually for.

26/08/2026

Film, words, and a new shop

For forty years, I have been taking photographs. Mostly on film. Mostly in the Vendée, Nantes, and the UK, with a few detours to places like China. For a long time, those photographs just lived on my hard drives, or in boxes in the attic. Recently, I decided it was time to do something with them. So, I built a shop....

After 40 years of shooting film, I have opened a shop. Browse fine art prints fulfilled by WhiteWall in Berlin, plus digital downloads and photography eBooks

21/08/2026

Inducted

She had been at a sleepover. I collected her, pointed the car in a direction I already knew, and said nothing about where we were going. I had…...

She had been at a sleepover. I knew where we were going; she didn't. A Wednesday in July at the Zoo de la Boissière du Doré — giraffes, lorikeets, and a map she refused to give back.

17/08/2026

Jardin Extraordinaire: This Time I Actually Looked at the Map

I headed back out with the Canon AE1 Program to capture more of the Voyage à Nantes, this time at the Jardin Extraordinaire—a hidden garden carved into an abandoned quarry. With the car at 48°C, it was sweltering, but the wandering through Chantenay and an unplanned brewery visit made the day worth every frame....

Exploring a quarry-turned-garden in Nantes with a Canon AE1 Program, HP5+, and Fomapan 100 in 48°C heat. Street photography from the Voyage à Nantes.

08/08/2026

First day of spring, and I drove out to Saint-Hilaire-de-Loulay to photograph a château I'd been meaning to get back to.

Château de la Preuille has been here since the 11th century — fortress, residence, abandonment, and whatever quiet resilience comes after that. The people who run it have a motto: "It's not perfect, it's paradise." Spend an afternoon there and you understand why they chose it.

I pulled the HP5+ from 400 to 200 ASA before I left — one stop of overexposure, finer grain, softer tones. For nine-hundred-year-old stone and dormant vineyards on a still March morning, it felt right. What I ended up photographing wasn't the grand gestures — the round towers earn their place — but the details: w**e bottles behind a window, ivy on a barn wall, vine stocks patient in the cold. Colour would have placed these firmly in March 2026. In monochrome, they could be from any point in the château's long life.

Nikon FE, Ilford HP5+ pulled to 200 ASA, developed in Ilfosol 3 at 1:9. Full set at ijmphotography.net — link in bio.

07/08/2026

Voyage à Nantes: Following the Green Line

It was 46°C in the car when I set off and 37°C by the time I got out at Feydeau. July in Nantes, and I had a Canon AE1, two rolls of film and a green line painted on the pavement to follow. This year's Voyage à Nantes is about the earth, and I was mostly about not melting....

46°C in the car, 37°C on the pavement. Walking the Voyage à Nantes green line with a Canon AE1 and a roll of HP5+ pulled to 100 ASA.

07/08/2026

Before the rehearsal, before the concerto, before any of the work — lunch. The Symphonique des bords de Loire eats together, and I photographed it on Fomapan 100 in the Pentax ME Super.

Fine grain, communal food, the calm that only exists in the fifteen minutes before somebody picks up a violin. Part 1 of an orchestra trilogy on the blog — link in bio.

📷 Pentax ME Super, Fomapan 100

05/08/2026

Second time at the Jardin Extraordinaire. I said I'd come back with Kodak Ultramax 400. Instead I showed up with the Canon EOS 500 and a roll of AGFA APX 100. These things happen.

It was a warm Sunday in April — free entry, blue sky, sound of the waterfall carrying up from below. Climbers at the rock face, kids in the sun, people stretched out on the lawns. Someone at the table next to me looked around at the afternoon and said it out loud: "On est bien là." I agreed, though nobody asked me.

The EOS 500 is easy company — light, unobtrusive, autofocus, auto-exposure, just gets on with it. The 24–70mm changed how I read the place; I went through the roll faster than expected. A robin landed near my foot, thought better of it, and disappeared into the bushes. A nice Sunday in Nantes. Free entry.

Full post at ijmphotography.net — link in bio.

03/08/2026

A 45-minute walk along the river in Clisson. Canon EOS 500, Agfaphoto APX 400. No plan beyond keeping the camera loaded.

Castles. A viaduct. Calla lilies. Somebody's laundry hung out over the wall. That's what film photography finds when you stop looking too hard and start looking behind you.

Full walk on the blog — link in bio.

📍 Clisson
📷 Canon EOS 500, Agfaphoto APX 400