Belvédère de l'Escalès, Route des Crêtes

The Route des Crêtes is the D23 loop out of La Palud-sur-Verdon, a little over twenty kilometres of switchbacks with more than a dozen belvederes cut into the northern rim. The Escalès belvedere is the one most people mean when they say they have seen the Verdon: it looks straight across at the Falaise de l'Escalès, a sheer three-hundred-metre wall that is one of the most famous climbing faces in Europe, with the river a thin green ribbon in the shadow at the bottom.

The frame is about scale, so put your subjects small and let the canyon do the work — one couple on the stone parapet with the far wall behind them says more than any close-up. A wide lens exaggerates the drop; a short telephoto from ten metres back compresses the layers of rock and reads more like the place actually feels.

Light is the whole problem here. The gorge runs roughly east to west, so at midday the canyon floor is black and the rim is blown out. Late afternoon is the window: the sun swings round onto the south-facing wall opposite and the limestone turns from grey to warm ochre while the belvedere itself stays comfortable. First light works too, softer and with mist sitting in the gorge on autumn mornings.

Part of the loop is one-way, and the road closes for snow, ice and rockfall — usually in winter, sometimes after storms at any time of year. Check the road status the morning of the shoot rather than the week before, and allow far more driving time than the distance suggests: the belvederes are barely two kilometres apart but the parking is tiny and the bends are slow.