Rendez-vous Café with photographer Benoît Thiault!

Rendez-vous Café with photographer Benoît Thiault!

 July 24, 2018
 About 7 minutes

Coffee meeting with photographer Benoît Thiault

Hello, Benoît,

Thank you for accepting the invitation. I came across your photos of the Côte d'Azur on your Instagram account and loved the shots and the atmosphere... so I wanted to know more about your work. How did you get into photography and why did you choose the Côte d'Azur as your theme?

The Côte d'Azur is a challenge for me and that's why I love it. I'm a landscape photographer in a virgin environment of human landscaping or almost. This aspect of things plays a lot in my compositions. I avoid urbanism and for the moment I rely on a local network of friends and acquaintances to find the places to photograph. In the end, photography and the technical aspects that surround it represent only 10% of the final realization of an image. When I'm on the French Riviera, I have to exercise my eye like nowhere else to photograph the way I like. It's an exercise that takes a lot of preparation time but generates great creativity. For example, if I want to photograph a waterfall, one of the things I'll have to do is study the level of rainfall to see if it's going to be swollen or not. To choose the spot, I will also take into account the weather on the day and the days before to design my colorimetry.

What do you find to photograph in this region that you can't find anywhere else?

Over 500 meters, you can have disconcerting variations. My favorite part of the Côte d'Azur, and the one I work in the most, is Provence, for its atypical light and the changes in landscape that take place over a short distance. As a result, it's an inexhaustible subject to photograph. I also like to photograph its vegetation, but the kind you don't see every day: lavender, for example, is a subject that doesn't really interest me, as it's been seen too many times before.

What are the photo subjects you deal with the most?

It's landscapes that inspire me most, but I wear two hats: landscape gardener and reporter for the commune where I work. The roles are very different from each other, and I also take great pleasure in photographing human emotions, people's positions and attitudes. I take them on the spot: I don't like to take posed photos. I like spontaneous attitudes.

If you had to choose your 4 favorite photos taken in the region, which ones would they be?

First I'll say " Entre ombres et lumière ", then " Serendipity ". Both together. Then I'll choose " A Midsummer Night's Dream " for my time in Antibes and finally, the last but not the least, " Le rocher des pendus ", one of my last photos.

Could you tell us for each one of them why you love them?

Adore is not the word: rather, they represent different emotions each time.

For the shooting on the customs officers' path in Antibes, it is a one and a half second long exposure. The place is steep and difficult to access but the light is so special. I really liked the raw file. There is a fantastic atmosphere and this impression inspired me a lot to give it this particular rendering. It's also one of the first photos in which the staged water has such a precise role. I then tried to translate what the place inspired me, a magical place, close to a dreamlike atmosphere reminiscent of Tolkien, a literature that I like and whose atmosphere I wanted to retranscribe.

In Saint-Laurent, the shot was taken on the Esplanade des Goélands. In the middle of winter after a busy day, I wanted to unwind. The photo is a perfect counterpoint to these relentlessly repetitive days, when we're constantly pushing the limits of our beings. I wanted to provide an answer to daily stress, a way to breathe after a crazy day. This sunset represents the fleeting nature of long exposure. Light conditions can radically change a shot in a matter of seconds. It's an exciting, almost exhilarating sensation. You anticipate the passing of a cloud, you open more or less to gain sharpness, in short, it makes you euphoric. I'd like people to take their time, stop scrolling, settle on a photo and ask themselves what emotions it provokes in them. Eventually, I'd like to offer regular photo appointments to get viewers to be a little disturbed by their own feelings. It can reveal hidden emotions; it can also be irritation. In any case, I don't want to leave the viewer indifferent.

A Midsummer Night's Dream brings back fond memories. I was doing my first steps in night shooting. I used to travel regularly to Antibes for other reasons. This architectural complex was silent. It was already very late and all the shops were closed. By taking the time and patience to frame it properly, I was able to get this shot. It is not the best but it is one of the most formative. That night I felt like I was gaining experience.

The Rock of the Hanged Men in Mandelieu is surrounded by legends. A lot of things are told and one enters the history of the city. I wanted, in this photograph, to associate the image that the tale conveys with the atmosphere of the place. It's still a seascape and therefore a challenge. The sea has always been a problem for me to treat it correctly in my compositions. Here, the composition was done around the rocks, and despite the advanced darkness and the impossibility of linking the exposure times, I find the whole thing homogeneous in the end. I don't want to make beautiful to make beautiful... I'm not interested.

To talk about the French Riviera more generally, if you were to give us:

- What's the name of your favorite local dish?

Uh, I'll say socca. It's personal: my sweetheart introduced me to it. And chickpea starch helps me manage my energy when we're walking for 3 or 4 hours to find the photo.

- The place you'd advise everyone to visit?

The one for whom every step is a discovery.

- The scenery you'll never get tired of looking at here:

The Cap d'Antibes... my girlfriend is from Antibes and it's a dream generator for me. It's not the best spot aesthetically but it's the one that inspires me all the quintessence of the encounter that has turned my life upside down. It's the most personal cliché associated with my most cherished memory...

And finally, a word for the French Riviera:

Photogenic! Not in the usual sense of "aesthetic". For me, it's the balance between framing, the environment in which the photo is taken and the subject matter. It's the way you convey emotion and feeling. On the Côte d'Azur, you can photograph 1,000 subjects in 1,000 frames. The light is never the same, and the subjects vary all the time. The Côte d'Azur is so varied, it allows you to be wildly creative!

Anything you want to add for our readers?

Get out of the house!

 

Thanks for the interview.

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