Fotografen in Quimper & die Pointe du Raz

The Pointe du Raz is where France runs out. A spine of grey rock drops into the Raz de Sein, the channel between the mainland and the Île de Sein, with La Vieille lighthouse standing on its rock about a kilometre offshore and a permanent white line of broken water around it. It is a Grand Site de France, which in practice means the car park sits about eight hundred metres back and you walk the last stretch across low heath — good news for photographs, because the buildings are behind you the whole way. The wind is the constant: even a calm summer morning here moves hair and dresses, and a session should be planned around that rather than against it. Just north, the Baie des Trépassés opens between the Pointe du Raz and the Pointe du Van, a long curve of pale sand held in a bowl of dark cliffs, empty at first light and reachable by car. Inland the register changes entirely. Quimper, an hour east, is the old capital of Cornouaille: the twin spires of the Saint-Corentin cathedral over a compact medieval centre, the Odet and the Steïr threaded through it with low footbridges hung with flowers in summer, and the half-timbered length of Rue Kéréon leading straight at the cathedral front. Twenty minutes north of Quimper, Locronan is the third register again — a single Renaissance square of granite houses with the overhead cables buried, which is why film crews keep coming back and why it photographs cleanly at any hour. Best months are May, June and September; July and August are busy and the Pointe fills with coaches by eleven.