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Hello there
This year, more than most, has reminded us that nature gets up
to work early in the year in Burgundy, and keeps its head down to finish the job before summer makes everything harder. And so, by the end of May, most birds have raised their broods, many plants have set seed and only the cold-blooded anticipate the arrival of the withering summer with joy.
After lighting the stove each evening until the third week of May , the jet-stream suddenly took off for the north allowing a flood of hot air from the south to sweep us off our feet this week. Heat of such intensity is rare before July and it must make it hard for those who haven’t finished the year’s business, such as the family of white storks we have been photographing near Gannay-sur-Loire. Their nest sits atop a platform that has been put up for their ilk, thoughtfully positioned above a wet field corner - but with no shade. The pool below is crowded with edible frogs that unwisely draw attention to themselves with loud choruses of “eat me”. But the storks seem to leave this convenience food alone; they’re good neighbours. Early on, the young birds got some shade when they hunkered down in the deep nest, but now they’re getting big and the adults aren’t home very much to play parasol. It’s a tough start in life.
While Charlotte will be enduring this heat through much of next week, I’m setting off for Newfoundland to experience early June without the “benefit” of the North Atlantic Drift- where temperatures will be 10 - 15 degrees cooler than here is France. Bring it on. More on that in the next MENUette.
With our best wishes
Charlotte and Niall
PS, did you know that you can also access this, and legacy, MENUettes back to January 2025 on our company’s website? It’s easier than trawling through all your emails, if there is something you want to see again.
Our latest Chez-nous, report
We ran the last of the spring’s Chez-nous Retreats last week for Andrew and Sally from Melbourne. As many guests do, they made their week with us part of a longer visit to Europe. It was a chance too, for visits to some locations I hadn’t been with other guests this spring. This included the launch site for para=gliders above Uchon,
gently declining Larochemillay, where you’re never quite sure if a run-down house has actually been abandoned,
and some back streets of Autun I’d overlooked in the past. The best of these are around the magnificent 12th C cathedral notable, not least, for the fact it took only 26 years to build. It’s ranked as a National Monument of France.
Andrew and Sally, who had previously travelled with us in Iceland 10 years previously, were keen to delve into some of my signature techniques so we shot many elements for later assembly using the templates I provided. Our favourite gardens, at Apremont -sur-Allier once again delivered “English Garden”-type images just as the roses were at “peak blossom”. If only British houses had shutters and their windows, astragals, the attractiveness of many would increase tenfold.
Kaleidoscopes proved again to be a popular topic and we shot these in the garden, in Autun and in Beaune. The truth is, it doesn’t matter where you are, what the light is like and how “messy” the your framing appears to be: you can always conjure a Kaleidoscope. While working with man-made structures, I prefer to use the Darker in-camera blending mode - a process than is so much simpler and more “organic” than mashing things together in Photoshop.
I think that Kaledioscopes get even more interesting when you make a mistake: you knock the tripod or forget the way you were rotating the camera. Or the subject moves. And while I routinely crop to square for obvious reasons, increasingly I leave them as 2 x 3”s or 4 x 5"s so that I can have more choice about which slice I take out to make Swirl and Slice triptychs.
Now, as Chez-nous is not a Chez-nous without gorgeous food and Charlotte rose to the challenge with style and panache as she always does. But…we didn’t have time to take photographs of any of it, so you’ll just need to take our word for it.
In addition to the stag beetles which have brought slightly scary drama our garden this year (females and males this time), a pair of hawfinches seems to be nesting nearby as they have become bar flies at our sunflower seed feeding station, untroubled by any other birds and ever less cautious of us as familiarity grows. We’re just hoping that next year, the hoopoes use the nesting box, lined and waiting for them.
We have one or two weeks in the autumn and early winter availabel for Chez-nous, so if you fancy a the idea of being treated like kings/ queens AND learning new photographic skills, drop us a line.
Pushing Lightroom a little harder
There’s an awful turnover of knowledge in photographic arena these days. What is gospel one minute is irrelevant the next, in the technical sphere, at least. All those sage pronouncements I used to make about “exposing to the right” and using a tripod and a low ISO are mostly old hat as technology laughs in the face of boundaries. Heavens, some mirrorless cameras will even take a picture before you press the shutter button down all the way. This has lead to a flood of photos of birds taking-off that look like their feet are attached to the branch with bird lime. So it’s not all good.
Technical barriers are tumbling for those who want to make real (rather than AI) images and I for one am glad. Like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve had to get used to the idea that it is OK to use high ISO for landscapes and plants if the need arises; that there is nothing morally wrong (😉) about cropping into high pixel-count images; that colour grading is not a black art if it communicates a genuine feeling about the subject; and that if I’ve fluffed the exposure, I can correct it in post-production. If you too grew up using exposure- sensitive transparency film you’ll know just how big a deal this is.
Take this black crowned night heron.
I was living dangerously…. and had my camera in Aperture Priority mode rather than Manual to photograph white storks at their nest. They didn’t need any exposure compensation (EV) but when the bc night heron suddenly appeared overhead I had no time to check exposure and ran off three frames before it has gone. If that was a transparency, it would be heading for the bin.
It’s no hardship to lighten the exposure over all and shadows in particular, of course. And who would have thought that there was so much detail visible under the wing? But a picture like this needs a lot of correction and after you’ve done it you’re on the path to the grainy graveyard. Or you were, until Adobe introduced Topaz-strength noise removal.
If you don’t use De-noise in Lightroom, try it. It’s arguably the most useful innovation in recent years (the image above zooms in on the heron, post adjustments) and frees you up to use much, much higher ISOs than you would have dared in the past. All I’m waiting for now is Adobe’s version of CaptureOne’s Match Look tool. Please tell me it’s in development…
White chocolate panna cotta
Panna cotta, unembellished, is already a smooth, refined, dessert. But incorporate white chocolate, infuse with garden thyme and pair it with a rich berry coulis and it joins the top table of noble puddings. I like to serve the pan cottas in small, elegant coffee cups with coulis and a little shortbread biscuit in attendance.
I use gelatine in this recipe, but for if you would prefer the vegetarian alternative, agar-agar, I’ve given dir- ections for that at the end. Since the panna cottas need at least 4 hours to set well, you may want to make them the day before you need them.You can also make them as moulded shapes in little dariole tins.
If there is coulis left over, you’ll find it a zingy accompaniment to yoghurt and muesli at breakfast, but keep it refrigerated. You can use fresh or frozen berries for the coulis.
For the panna cotta:
Double cream, 600ml (21 fl oz)
Whole milk, 175ml (6 fl oz)
Caster sugar, 75g (21⁄2 oz)
Vanilla seeds, 1 tsp or a vanilla pod, split and the seeds scraped out Gelatine leaves, 5, soaked in cold water
White chocolate, 100g (31⁄2 oz), finely chopped
Fresh thyme
For the berry coulis:
Mixed berries, 500g (171⁄2 oz), fresh or frozen
Caster sugar, 50g (13⁄4 oz)
Half a lemon, its juice
Make the panna cottas first. Have all the ingredients measured out, the serving cups or glasses on a tray and a drip-free jug for pouring the mix into them.
Put the gelatine leaves* in a bowl and cover them with cold water.
Pour in the cream, milk, sugar, vanilla and thyme into a large, heavy-based pan and bring them to a simmer. Don’t let it boil; as soon as it stars to bubble at the side of the pan and steam rises, take the pan off the heat and sit it on a wooden board. Pick out and discard the thyme.
Strain the water from the gelatine and add it to the cream mix, stirring well until it’s all dissolved. That won’t take long. Add in the chopped chocolate and stir until it has dissolved. The mixture is now ready to pour into the pots before retiring to the fridge to chill and set.
Now, to the berry coulis. Tip the fruit and sugar into a pan, mix it well then simmer it for long enough for the fruit to cook - that may take 10-15 minutes, depending on whether you used fresh or frozen berries. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the lemon juice. If you want a clear coulis, mash the fruit into a pulp and extract the juice by pressing it with the back of a large spoon against a sieve.
Store the juice in a sealable container. If the coulis strikes you as too runny, mix a tablespoon of cornflour in a little water in a cup and pour the coulis back in the pan to cook for a few minutes on a low heat until it thickens.
When I serve the panna cottas, I set a crunchy biscuit on the side for a contrast of texture, put the coulis in its own little container and dress up the plate a little with some dried cornflower petals.
* If you want to use agar-agar instead of gelatine, substitute with 11⁄2 -2 tsp of the powder and dissolve it in warm water. Next, boil it in a small pan for a minute or two to activate its gelling agent. Add this into the mixture instead of gelatine and mix well. The quality of both gelatine leaves and agar-agar powder vary widely and it’s wise to read the accompanying instructions closely to make sure you’re using the right amount for this recipe.
-from Travels with my Cake Tins
Charlotte x
Our 2026-27 Chez-nous brochures
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Do have a look at our 2026 (and into 2027) Chez-nous brochures If you want to progress your photography - and be treated like kings and queens - there really is nothing else like it. Let’s have a Zoom call to see what we can do for you.
Bonus footage: Lenticular clouds above Alyth
This picture is so old, it was made on transparency film. And there was only one copy (until I scanned it). Notions of scarcity tie in well, I think, what what appeals to me about cloud photography. Alfred Stieglitz was probably the first to make a big fuss about it in his body of work, Equivalents. Steiglitz’s genius was to recognise clouds as a valid subject in their own right - not merely as an emotional tone-setter for the landscape beneath them. Yet the clouds he photographed are, by and large, undistinguished; there is little sense of something extraordinary - and ephemeral - appearing in the heavens that demands attention. Call me obvious, but if you’re going to invent a new field of photography, at least populate it with some remarkable characters. Maybe like these dinky clouds that came and went in minutes, a lifetime ago.
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Our best wishes, Charlotte and Niall
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