This second part of Capturing The Last of the Autumn in the Creuse sees me returning to the department of Creuse.
The week before, my car decided to give up the ghost with the back brakes, which forced me to get the car fixed in the area.
During the first trip, I met a local who told me about a couple of different places to go to, which I didn’t know about. So as I was in the area, it seemed daft not to go and check them out.
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My return to the Creuse wasn’t part of some neat plan. It came after a fairly annoying end to the previous trip, when the back brakes on my car came loose, and I had to deal with a tow truck, a garage, and a much longer journey home than expected. So when I came back on Wednesday, around 16 November, the main reason was simple: I needed the car back.
Still, once I was there, it felt foolish not to make the most of the trip. Even with the poor weather, I had two fresh leads from that chance conversation with another photographer. One was a waterfall, which immediately got my attention because I don’t know that many near where I live. The other was a woodland area that was supposed to be full of colour. On the drive in, I had also noticed another spot only a couple of kilometres down the road, so the day quickly turned from a practical errand into a location hunt down in the Creuse.
That mix of duty and curiosity is often how these days happen. I rarely mind it. In fact, some of the better discoveries begin with no grand intention at all. You go out for one reason, then something else opens up.
The weather wasn’t helping. The light was flat, the air was damp, and everything had that soft late-autumn haze that can either help a scene or flatten it completely. Even so, the Creuse has a habit of looking good in poor conditions. You only have to find the right subject for the day in front of you.
Because I had never visited this waterfall before, I was relying on a bit of local information and my mapping app to get me there. I use ViewRanger, and for about 20 euros a year, it gives me access to the full set of French IGN 1:25,000 maps. For trips like this in the Creuse, where I am working on instinct and changing plans as I go, that sort of detail is brilliant.
I came across what looked like an indistinct path, the sort of track you could easily dismiss if you were walking past. On the IGN map, though, it seemed to line up with the route to the waterfall. So I followed it, hoping it would lead somewhere worthwhile. Nearby, I had also spotted what looked like an old water mill, perhaps abandoned, so there was the chance of another subject even if the falls turned out to be underwhelming.
That is one of the pleasures of working in places like the Creuse. You often find yourself moving through woodland and river valleys with only partial information. Sometimes that means dead ends. Sometimes it means you round a corner and hear water before you see it.
Once I found the waterfall, the first thing on my mind was not composition. It was safety.
My tripod gave me a sharp reminder of that almost straight away. I set it down for a moment, and it rolled down the slope and ended up in a heap further below. Thankfully, it stopped short of the water. Had it gone into the falls, that would have been a painful loss, both for the tripod and the camera gear attached to it.
Then there was the ground itself. The rocks were slick with moss, the slope was awkward, and I had around 15kg on my back, pushing me forward. I was also on my own. That matters. There are places where another person might look at a narrow path and think it is worth a try. Alone, with wet rock and no easy way back up if I slipped, the answer was no.
When I’m out on my own, no photograph is worth a bad fall on wet stone.
There was one angle I wanted badly, down past a tree and further along the rock face, looking back up at the waterfall. From where I stood, I could see the image in my head. What I could also see was that the path beyond the tree was not safe enough to trust. So I stopped, had a proper look around, and looked for a better way to work the scene.
That judgement call is part of photographing rivers and waterfalls in autumn. Moss, wet leaves and steep banks make small mistakes costly. I would always rather leave with a lesser frame than not leave at all.
The first composition I managed from the upper section was not the one I wanted. I could set the tripod up, but only at a precarious angle, with my feet braced and the camera squeezed into a position that never felt comfortable. The waterfall itself was lovely, tucked into beautiful woodland, but the tree placement and the limited footing kept me from getting to the stronger view.
Still, the place had real charm. The woodland around it was good, and had I been there a couple of weeks earlier, with more of the autumn colour still hanging on, I think it would have looked superb. Finding strong woodland close to home in France isn’t always as easy as it was for me in England, so this alone felt useful.
I eventually made my way down to what was marked as the official viewpoint. From there, the scene changed. Instead of forcing the height of the falls, I now had a cascade running into a pool, with bubbles and patches of foam making patterns across the water during a long exposure. That was more promising, though the composition still wasn’t simple.
At first, I worked with my 24mm tilt-shift lens. The frame wanted to be in landscape orientation rather than vertical, because the pool and the rock edges mattered as much as the falling water itself. The problem was the amount of negative space between the front of the frame and the falls at the back. I needed the rocks to shape the image, yet they weren’t quite doing enough on either side.
I also had to watch a tree near the edge of the frame. At 24mm, it felt awkward, and I found myself wondering if the answer was to go wider. So I considered swapping to the 16-35mm. I do own a 17mm tilt-shift as well, but I hadn’t packed the adapter I needed for the polariser, which was frustrating.
For the exposure, I settled on 2.5 seconds. I tried 3 seconds, but that pushed the water too far into streaks for my taste. At 2.5 seconds, there was still movement, but also enough texture in the water to keep the scene believable. Some of the whites in the cascade were overexposed, which was always likely, but overall, the result was decent.
My honest verdict was simple. It was a beautiful place, but not an amazing one. I have seen better waterfalls elsewhere in the Creuse. Still, it was worth finding, and it gave me one more location to keep in mind when conditions are right.
After leaving the gorge, I went back to a place I had passed earlier, only a couple of minutes away. It was called Devil’s Bridge, and it immediately looked like one of those spots with strong potential. There was a bridge to my right that seemed to have been rebuilt at some point, though I couldn’t say whether that came from wartime damage or simple collapse over time. Below it, the river dropped through a small cascade, and beside it stood what looked like an old mill or factory building that once depended on water power.
The scene had shape. That was the first thing that stood out. The river made an S-curve, almost a Z-shape in places, which is exactly the kind of line that can carry the eye through a photograph. I could see how the water, the building, and the remaining leaves in the trees might work together.
The trouble was the day. I tried lengthening the exposure to pull the curve out of the water, and that part worked well enough. What didn’t work was the space above it. The sky had no interest at all, and a telephone line cut through the frame as another distraction.
This is the sort of scene where composition can be right, and the photograph can still fall short. I could crop in and lose some of the empty sky, but then I started to lose the shape and balance that made the composition work in the first place. I wanted the mill, the flow of the river, and the line leading into the picture. Trimming one part solved one issue and created another.
At that point, I had to stop for the practical stuff as well. My camera battery had died, and the GoPro battery was fading too, so I changed both and shifted my position slightly to test another angle.
Moving only a few metres made a surprising difference. With the 24mm tilt-shift, I could see how much better the scene looked when the river sat properly in the frame, and the line of water led the eye down towards the old building. The bones of the photograph were there. That was obvious.
What was missing was the sky. It needed life above the mill, not a blank patch of dull light. I don’t mind overcast weather at all, but some scenes need a little separation between the subject and the background. In this case, a patch of blue would have helped lift the yellow leaves still hanging in the trees. Those colours would have worked well together.
The overcast conditions did add one thing I liked. The remaining leaves and the soft light gave the place a slightly mysterious feel. So I didn’t come away thinking it was a failure. I came away thinking it was a place to return to.
I would rather bank a location for another day than force it into a photograph that never quite works.
I don’t replace skies. That isn’t how I work. If a place has potential but the conditions aren’t there, I would rather note it, remember it, and wait. If that means coming back at the weekend or even next year, so be it. Some photographs take longer.
The other location I had been told about in the Creuse was a woodland said to hold good autumn colour. In the end, I didn’t photograph it at all.
By the time I drove past, I could see that it was a large forest rather than a compact, obvious spot. There wasn’t a clear place to stop, walk in, and quickly find a composition that looked promising. I could have spent ages roaming around, burning petrol and daylight, but that felt wasteful. I prefer to know where I am going when I start using time and fuel in earnest.
That may sound unromantic, but it is simply practical. I do a lot of research before heading anywhere because it saves me from drifting without purpose. Spontaneity matters, of course, and some of the best finds happen by chance. Even so, there is a difference between exploring and wandering without enough information to make the most of a day.
So instead of forcing it, I left. By the end of the vlog, I was back on the banks of the Loire, and there was still a little autumn colour hanging on in places around the valley. That felt like a fair enough ending. I hadn’t come away with a full set of standout images, but I had added a few notes to the map, and that matters more than people sometimes admit.
Days like this in the Creuse are useful because they strip photography back to the essentials. I was reminded that finding a subject is only the start. After that, I still need safe access, a decent structure in the frame, and light that suits the place. Miss one of those, and the picture often stays incomplete.
The waterfall proved that perfectly. I found it, and it was lovely to see, but access limited the better angle. Then the viewpoint lower down gave me another option, though not a perfect one. Devil’s Bridge gave me a stronger composition, yet the sky let it down. The woodland may still be good, but I wasn’t prepared to waste the rest of the day trying to guess my way into it.
That is often how late autumn works in the Creuse. The colour is fading, the weather shifts quickly, and the best photographs depend on small windows of light and timing. There is a lot of patience in it. Sometimes patience is the whole point.
I also ended my day in the Creuse with a few ideas for what comes next. There were several possible directions for the next video but I hadn’t settled on one yet. That uncertainty never bothers me much. It usually means I have enough on the go to keep moving.
This return to the Creuse gave me fewer finished photographs than I had hoped for, but it gave me something solid, a better sense of where to come back to and when. The strongest lesson from the day was patience. Good locations are only half the job.
I left with one waterfall better understood, one riverside composition worth revisiting, and one woodland saved for a day when I can approach it properly. That is still a good day’s work.
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