on landscape The online magazine for landscape photographers

Tufa Cascades of the French Jura

Julian Barkway

Julian Barkway

Julian Barkway

Iam what can best be described as an enthusiastic amateur photographer. I try not to follow fashion or trends and I’m never happier than shooting with my 5x4 camera on good old sheet film. The intimate landscape is what interests me which is, perhaps, surprising given that I have been based in Switzerland for a number of years. My favoured habitat is the bottom of a rocky gorge but I do occasionally emerge to shoot the bigger vista. And I do occasionally shoot digital - but shhh, don’t tell anyone! website



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Picking a theme that is not geographically based is, I feel, a near impossibility with landscape photography - geography is our stock-in-trade, after all! So I decided to concentrate on the two similar tufa formations to be found within 50km of each other on the western fringes of the Jura mountain range, which neatly straddles the border between France and Switzerland.

I have been visiting these sets of cascades, in autumn or spring, more-or-less every year since 2008 and they never fail to surprise and inspire me. The four photos in my set comprise two from the falls at Baume-les-Messieurs (taken in Easter 2012) and two from the formation at Les Planches (from Easter 2013). All were made on Kodak 5x4 inch colour negative film.

Tufa is formed by mineral deposition in the presence of water so the rock grows organically and is directly shaped by the flow, taking on amazing forms as a result. My set is intended to convey the sheer variety of shape, texture and colour to be found at both locations.

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