Check out my latest YouTube video about landscape photography in France, where I’m exploring Indre. It shows you some of the beautiful places to go in this often bypassed area of the country.
The department of Indre is a very rural area of central France, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to see. In fact, if you start delving deeper into the area, you’ll find it has beautiful rolling landscapes, river gorges with castles and beautiful villages.
So take a look at what I got up in this week’s episode. And I’m definitely going back for more at some point.
And if you’re interested in discovering France with a camera, then do check out my regular photo tours of France each year.
I came into Indre with unfinished business. A few days earlier, I had missed a superb sunrise, not because I was late out of bed, but because flooding had cut off some of the routes I needed. By the time I reached the area, the light had gone. That can be frustrating, but it’s part of photographing the French countryside. Plans shift, roads close, and sometimes the weather decides the whole day for you.
So I gave myself a reset and drove back in for dawn.
That made sense because Indre is one of those places that rewards patience. It is rural, understated, and often overlooked beside better-known parts of France. Yet once you start moving through the department, you find old towns on river bends, villages with strong character, church interiors that stop you in your tracks, and castle viewpoints that feel made for autumn.
The weather also had a say in the day. Forecasts suggested mixed conditions, and that proved right. Light came and went, clouds built and cleared, and more than once I had to treat a stop as a recce rather than a finished shot. Even so, that kind of day often produces more than a perfect blue-sky forecast because it forces you to stay alert.
A few things make Indre especially good for photography:
For me, exploring Indre was less about ticking off famous spots and more about following the light.
My first stop was Argenton-sur-Creuse, a place I already knew and trusted for an early start. I had photographed it before, but I lost those images in a hard drive crash a couple of years ago. That gave the morning an extra push. I wasn’t only after a good sunrise, I was also trying to remake something that had disappeared.
I arrived in time for the pre-dawn colour, and there was some lovely reddish tone in the sky. It was good, but that wasn’t the main event. What I really wanted was the side light, with the sun lifting over the horizon and catching the church and old town below. There is a point in that kind of sunrise when everything lines up for a few minutes, and the scene goes from quiet to alive.
To compress the view, I used my Canon 100-400mm. A long lens worked well here because it pulled the church and town together and made the rising light feel more direct. I started in portrait orientation, then switched to landscape as the light changed. That gave me options once I got home.
I was filming without my usual gimbal because it had broken, so some of the behind-the-scenes footage was a little rougher than I would have liked. Still, the conditions made up for that. The church sat in just the right place, the horizon stayed clear enough, and the first sunlight did exactly what I had hoped.
When dawn light is coming from the horizon, getting to a familiar spot early matters more than almost anything else.
That short spell of side light was the reason I had come. It also set the tone for the rest of the day. I wasn’t chasing famous landmarks. I was chasing moments when ordinary stone and old buildings suddenly looked full of life.
Later in the morning, I moved on to one of the strangest and most memorable places of the day, the painted church in Le Menoux. From the outside, it already feels different, but the interior is what stays with you. Rather than the dark, muted look many rural churches carry, this one is bright, graphic and full of painted forms. It feels less like stepping into a preserved monument and more like stepping into someone’s imagination.
I had mentioned earlier that I wanted to show “another church”, but this was not more of the same. It was something else entirely.
The local story, at least from what I gathered on site, is that a painter came to the area decades ago and found in the white interior a blank canvas. That idea suits the place perfectly. The surrounding area is also linked with artists and painters who were drawn to the quality of light and the colours of the valley, especially in autumn. Once you’ve seen the landscape around here, that makes complete sense.
There is also a sense that locals don’t want the place overrun, and I understand that. Part of its charm is the surprise of finding it.
Photographically, I kept things simple. I used a tilt-shift lens and spent time looking straight up at the painted ceiling and upper walls. In a space like this, precision matters. If verticals drift or the frame starts to pull away from the architecture, the image loses some of its calm. The tilt-shift let me keep that control and concentrate on shape, colour and structure rather than distortion.
I didn’t want to turn that stop into a technical breakdown. Some places are better shown than explained. This was one of them. I walked the interior, took in the details, and tried to make pictures that kept the feeling of the church intact.
For anyone who enjoys photographing France beyond the obvious postcard stops, this church is one of those places that sticks with you.
From Le Menoux, I spent some time scouting and then headed towards Gargilesse-Dampierre, one of the “Beaux Villages de France” and a place long linked with George Sand. I had been there years ago and already had a photograph from a different angle, but I wanted something new. That meant checking a viewpoint I had picked out earlier and seeing whether it worked in real conditions.
The first stop was useful, though not ideal. The light was harsh and slightly backlit, with the sun pushing from the direction of the camera. Down below, the village, church and what looked like a castle had shape, but the scene didn’t fully come together. It felt more like a scouting frame than a final image.
That said, the place has huge potential. The trees around the village would be superb in autumn, and even in mixed light, I could see what the scene might become under the right conditions. The village was also far quieter than usual, which changed the mood. A place like this often draws visitors, but on that day it felt almost empty.
I then moved to another viewpoint, closer to the northern side, and that one worked better. The side light was stronger, the village sat more cleanly in the frame, and the extra height helped. To gain that little bit of elevation, I put my camera on the roof of the car, with the tripod levelled carefully because the wind was nudging the vehicle around. It sounds a little improvised, and it was, but it did the job.
I had the 100-400mm on again, at roughly 150mm, and used a polariser. I wasn’t expecting a huge change, but it helped more than I thought, especially with the greens on the slopes beneath the castle.
There was still a line of trees at the bottom of the frame that I couldn’t avoid without much more height. I decided to live with it. Sometimes the right answer is to accept the scene you have, rather than chasing a perfect version that isn’t possible.
Between locations, I also came across one of those views that lodges in your mind straight away, a castle above a river bend, with the water curving through the scene below. I believe it was overlooking the Indre, and it was one of the strongest subjects of the day. I could already picture it in autumn, with softer light and colour in the trees. Some places announce themselves at once as a return visit.
That feeling carried on at Boucle du Pin, another viewpoint I know and one that works well when the side light begins to fall across the valley. By that stage of the afternoon, the sky had improved, and there was enough direction in the light to build a panorama.
For that shot, I used a short rail on the tripod head, about 19 cm long. It isn’t a perfect panoramic setup, but it shifts the camera position back enough to make the sweep cleaner. When you’re rotating for a stitched frame, small details matter. A poor pivot point can create problems later, especially if near and far elements overlap awkwardly.
My approach was straightforward:
The side light was good, though I could tell it would be even better a bit later in the day. Still, when you’re travelling on an itinerary, you work with the time you have. I also considered checking the other nearby viewpoint because it was only a couple of kilometres away and more or less on my route. That is one of the pleasures of working in this part of France. Good locations often sit close enough together that you can adjust as the light changes.
I ended the day in La Brenne, the area often called the land of a thousand lakes. The weather was beginning to close in by then, with heavy cloud building from the west, so I knew the window was narrowing. Even so, I stopped at a ruined castle in a small village because I had photographed it before and, like the dawn view at Argenton-sur-Creuse, those older images had been lost.
Ruins like this always pull me in. You stand in front of a broken tower or a collapsed wall and start wondering what the place once sounded like. There is an easy romance to that idea, but there is also a practical photographic appeal. Ruins strip a subject back to shape, texture and line. You don’t need much more than directional light and a bit of space around it.
I made two main frames, one focusing on the south-eastern tower and another taking in the wider remains of the castle. I also grabbed some drone footage from a respectful distance. The light was changing all the time, and I could see darker weather moving closer, so it felt sensible to treat it as the last proper stop.
One thing that always comes back to me in France is the sheer number of castles and historic sites. There are thousands of registered monuments across the country, and that becomes obvious once you start driving through rural departments. You turn a bend, and there is another church, another ruin, another hilltop village that deserves more time.
That was true of this day from start to finish. Even with shifting weather and a few imperfect skies, there was always another subject around the next corner.
The strongest lesson from this day was simple. Indre rewards patience more than speed. I went out because the earlier footage wasn’t right, and that second attempt gave me better light, better subjects and a day that felt far more honest.
What stays with me most is the mix of places in such a small area, dawn over Argenton-sur-Creuse, the painted church at Le Menoux, the viewpoints above Gargilesse-Dampierre, and the ruined castle in La Brenne under a darkening sky. If you love photographing France, exploring Indre gives you plenty to work with, especially if you’re happy to slow down and let the day unfold.
