I took this snap somewhere just near the Vosges mountains in France,
France
Machine étrange dans le rond-point
Bridge over the River Doubs
Cernay ice
Continuing the series, ice crystals, on a bush, in front of a tree, in Cernay
Côte-du-Doubs at La Chaux-de-Fonds
Cernay shrubs
Continuing the series, if you ask me, no easy job to keep these shrubs pruned so identically
Cernay chinmey
Continuing the series, I’m definitely coming back here because this snap was taken just outside of a HUGE industrial park that was deserted – sort of a ghost factory. It was all open to the public, so it’s on my bucket list to head back and just poke around. According to a small plaque here, this chimney was part of a textile factory – and I assume that the streams running down from the Vosges Mountains in the background were the reason for its location (water power):
Cernay icy bushes
Continuing the series, I could not resist capturing this snap of some tall grass (or a bush?) with the leaves all covered in ice,
Cernay hungry man
Continuing the series, this street art seems to be an homage to hungry people, but to be honest I never stopped to see if there was a sign that described it.
Cernay Church
Cernay in the eastern French part of Alsace known as Haut-Rhine is an interesting village for two reasons. First, apparently the German SS used this village as an “indoctrination” center during the second world war; and second, because the Thur river flows through it, and there was a river of the exact same name flowing through Winterthur when I lived there. (Note: it flowed through Winterthur before I moved there, and it probably still flows there today.)
Anyway, here’s the church:
Pontarlier portal
Pontarlier through the portal
Pontarlier castle
Just like just about everything else in Europe, the Chateaux de Joux dates back to the 1200’s.
Pontarlier tree
Pontarlier rock
Alsatian Transmitter Tower
Garden wall in Crans-Montana
Moon over Metz
FAKE – Metz church in the sun
Take a look at this incredible snap:
Well, the original snap looked like this:
Just for the record: the photos I post are never in any way retouched or enhanced or changed – except for cropping. OK, and maybe a very simple color correction a la Google.
But in this series of blog posts entitled FAKE I publish some rather interesting images I have enhanced in some way.
I’ve recently bought a Mac – and for my photo hobby I am trying an application called Lumina AI – it offers not just the usual photo editing and correction features, but powerful “faking” features like adding skies and suns that are not really there.
Metz church through the trees
Metz church – unstretched
Metz flower
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
Tobacco shed in France?
While walking around the northeastern Lorraine city of Metz I stumbled across a street called Rue de la Manufacture, with a small sign that tobacco was produced here many years ago. Although there were no signs, I wondered if this building was used as a shed for storing the leaves? It was very similar to sheds that I’ve seen in the southern US, where the leaves are hung and allowed to ferment or dry out of whatever it is they want to happen to the leaves:
It sounded like an interesting historical topic (producing tobacco in France!), so I did a little research on Wikipedia and found out this might be the case. You can see the Rue de la Manufacture below, and just to the right and up you’ll see Imp. Belle-Isle, where the northeastern most building (with the grey roof) is the arial view of the snap I took:
I think it’s just wonderful how you can dovetail a photography hobby with an easy bit of historical research, to find out things like this!
[Note added on 06.09.2021] After discussing tobacco barns in Cleveland with my father it became apparent that most of the barns were painted black, since the extra heat would help in the curing process. Interestingly, the building above has a black/gray roof, whereas all the other buildings have red tile roofs – more circumstantial evidence that this may very well have been a barn for storing tobacco!